MARY D’AMORE

WRITER AND ILLUSTRATOR

**Also at Farley’s Book Shop, New Hope, PA**

*Sourland Farm* is a literary analogue of Emily Brontë’s *Wuthering Heights*, translating its exploration of obsession, family, trauma, and forgiveness into a twentieth-century American Gothic landscape.
It asks: **What if the same personalities and circumstances unfolded in our own time? Does time alter human nature, or merely disguise it?**
*Sourland Farm* moves the story 200 years later and 5,000 miles away, taking place between 1969 and 2002. In my debut novel, I follow six-year-olds Caroline and Hadley from their meeting in 1969 through the very ends of their lives, as the next generation completes the story.
The Sourland Mountain of New Jersey, an isolated place long thought to be haunted, provides the perfect setting for this Victorian Gothic homage. -

Early Reader Review: “Mary’s preface and introduction provide clear windows into the vast challenges of modernizing a dark tale by 150-200 years. Her conversion is absolutely plausible, in part because she lives on the Sourland Mountain, widely regarded when I lived there in the ‘80s just as she describes: natural, semi-tamed, eerie, perhaps dangerous —a perfect setting. This is a tale of flawed people living in rural isolation in that setting, where mental health was unevenly understood and not necessarily valued. Love had to coexist with ignorance, naiveté, neglect, illness, jealousy, greed, bitterness, and obsession. Disagreements were often strikingly frank and crossed generations. As Mary asks in her introduction, ‘Is (Brontë ) portraying mental illness or the very essence of human nature itself, as natural as the wind and rain?’ Employing a NYC tenant new to the mountain to prompt the housekeeper to relate the complex story is a realistic device, mirroring the plot line in Wuthering Heights. Considerable skill was required to keep the manifold characters, traumas, motivations, flashbacks, joys and interwoven tales flowing smoothly. Sourland Farm is a beautifully written, provocative story.”

Pete Jaques, author of Shaking Hands with Tomorrow: An Independent School Leader’s Hard-Earned Lessons

Scroll down to view my children’s books, which introduce historical and legendary themes that contain factual adventures and myth. Contemporary children’s stories are based on my family’s life and usually involve animals - chickens, horses, cats, and even “stuffed.”

“Writing children’s books as a subversive activity” is a tempting mission statement. Without specifically writing anything beyond the simple story at hand, “seeds” are planted for future assimilation, while avoiding commentary or a teaching tone.

I write about lesser-known individuals who have been left out of most history lessons and in a way that can be interesting to the adult reader, too, without offering any obvious opinions to the child. In my contemporary stories I try to sneak in some science or math or even some psychological attributes all wrapped into short easy reads.