Books More Honest than Feminine

Mary Alice Monroe writes from the heart, to the hearts of her readers. Or she doesn't write at all.

It is a quality of emotional honesty, together with lyrical descriptive passages, that draws her audience to books like "The Four Seasons," a novel of the relationships among four sisters released on Thursday by Mira Books.

"If I don't cry during certain parts of the writing of a novel, then I know I am shortchanging my reader," says the Isle of Palms resident. "I know I'm not digging deeply enough and am not finding the truth."

Monroe's goal is not the mawkish sentimentality that characterizes many books in the general - and often misleading - category of "women's fiction," which is more a marketing distinction than a literary one.

Rather, the Chicago native and one-time teacher invests her novels with explorations of topical issues seen through the lens of character, all the while striving for realism in the way relationships are depicted.

"To sit down and write a novel requires a combination of courage and hubris. I really look for questions. I begin with a question that I'm interested in and that I believe others are interested in. Usually, I have my (central) idea for the next book as I finish the one I'm working on."

Monroe, who moved to the area with her family a year ago last August, doesn't mind being placed in the category of women's fiction.

"I do choose issues that are important to a lot of women out there. And I am writing relationship novels. I'm really interested in the nexus of relationships in a woman's life. I'm also fascinated with the subject of how books influence a woman's thoughts and thought processes."

One of five sisters (Monroe also has a quintet of brothers), she sees the relationships of sisters as one of the most complex. No less so with her fictional subjects - Jillian, Beatrice and Rose Season, who have gathered for the funeral of their younger sister, Meredith.

"You share a history as well as gender. You may fight and contradict each other, but it's a relationship you never get rid of."

The book incorporates the drama of a birth mother searching for her child, a subject of particular interest to the author and the reverse of the more familiar theme of an adult child searching for his or her biological parent. What started out as a small part of the story became the dominant premise, Monroe says.

"The Four Seasons" is her fourth novel, following "The Long Road Home" (1995), "Girl in the Mirror" (1998), and "The Book Club." (1999). Her fifth, set in South Carolina but as yet untitled, will be released next year.

The subject is a relationship at least as rewarding and fraught with turmoil - that between mothers and daughters.

"I'm excited about it," says Monroe, who also writes romantic fantasy fiction under her real name, Mary Alice Kruesi. "Not only is the new book set here, but it gives me an opportunity to include the 'turtle ladies' in the story."

Monroe is a member of The Turtle Team, a local organization that strives to monitor and track the births of the endangered loggerhead sea turtle.

She began her career as a writer of nonfiction, an outgrowth of a fascination with Asia. Monroe and her husband, Markus, currently a child psychiatrist with the Medical University of South Carolina, spent their honeymoon in Japan in 1972. It took only a few months of living in the country, with side trips to Hong Kong, Macao and Thailand, to imbue Monroe with a passion for Asian culture.

"It's typical of me to dive in wholeheartedly. I had been in school at Northwestern University but left and got married. After that trip, when we were living in New Jersey, I went back to school and got my master's degree at Seton Hall - one of the few places one could study Japanese in the '70s."

Her first solo effort was "Crossroads to Literacy," which emerged while Monroe was helping establish a government-funded ESL (English as a Second Language) program for Southeast Asian refugees in Milwaukee in 1980. She saw the need to write an English-language survival text and promptly produced one.

"It was a unique program. The Hmong, who are mountain people from Laos, came in huge numbers. They had no skills. They were tribal people who were illiterate even in their own language. But they had to adapt, and quickly."

Monroe already had given birth to two daughters, Claire and Gretta, before delivering her first novel. During a subsequent move to Washington, D.C., she finally decided to write the novel that had long been percolating in her imagination. But "The Long Road Home" benefited from an unexpected boost, her third pregnancy.

"I was pregnant with my son, Zack, and the doctor confined me to bed rest. I was teaching at the time and was horrified. That's when my husband handed me a pad and pencil and told me to write the novel. Essentially, he was saying 'No more excuses. Do it.'

"I was very lucky to get that first novel published. And I know that. I'm a believer in fate."

And in optimism.

"I'm realistic enough to know that bad things happen to good people. But I also believe that one life can make a difference. You have the best chance of making a difference with those you have direct contact. That's one reason I'm so interested in relationships.

"When I write a novel I work very, very hard to present characters that speak realistically about what happens in their lives and the issues facing them. I do an enormous amount of research until that character is so real that she starts talking on her own."