The Curse of Our Profound Disorder by Marilyn Jaye Lewis has released. This slightly erotic, Southern-voiced, smooth yet facing various taboos, coming-of-age story breaks a lot of rules.
Meet Jemima Callahan.
Conceived in the back of a car, born to a teen mom, and known to be the illegitimate offspring of the town’s married preacher– she learns young how hard the world can be. Her mama said it best:
“I was conceived in passion,” my mama would sigh regretfully. “Then I was born among passionless, worn-out people.”
Jemima knows that the Reverend Parker Peabody was her mama’s true love and only lover, and she absorbs her mother’s notion that sexual pleasure is the presence of God. Her mother’s mental illness lands Jemima in foster care, where she faces sexual and physical abuse until leaving home.
This novel chronicles her coming-of-age and finding herself, meeting a rag-tag cast of characters and selling herself to survive until she meets a lawyer who offers her a position as a housekeeper. As she navigates her new world, she pines for her father and hopes one day to meet him.
Will Jemima find the Reverend Parker Peabody? Will he live up to the fairytale her mother has spun about him? Is the truth worth the risk?
(The Curse of Our Profound Disorder is available in Kindle Unlimited.)
Her 93-year-old Uncle Eddie offered this review: “Just finished reading your book. It was strangely entertaining and a shift from my usual reading material. You have an unusually creative mind. The plots are always twisted from places I’m not familiar. I hope it does really well for you.”
Marilyn will be at the Holland Book Nook in Newark, Ohio, Saturday, October 3 from 1 to 5 p.m. The bookstore is part of the Historic Arcade downtown.
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