Fatherless, Fearless, Female: A Memoir

(Paperback)

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Mary, a Rust Belt farm girl, the bastard child of an unwed, unconventional single mother, claws her way out of poverty and weds, but soon stumbles over the myth of monogamy. When her first husband, Don, dies, she seeks a more honest, equitable relationship, determined that her infant son, Billy, will not be a fatherless child as she was. The day before she leaves on a freighter for Greece, she meets Isaac in the East Village, and their romance blooms as they shuttle back and forth between Brooklyn and Crete. In addition to the distance between them, however, Mary must also take on Isaac's conventional Jewish mother and all her beliefs about how and where they should live. Fatherless, Fearless, Female follows the international adventures of the dauntless Mary as she moves from a mob-operated strip joint in Chicago to the vineyards and villages of Crete, from art schools in New York and Jerusalem to the Imperial Iranian Air Force Base in Isfahan during the revolution of '78. Along the way, she navigates through a maze of broken vows, broken families, and broken educational systems-and learns, at last, the value of love and the true meaning of her mother's deathbed story.

Reviews

2022 NYC Big Book Awards Distinguished Favorite in Memoir
2021 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Awards Silver Winner in Best New Voice: Nonfiction
2022 Independent Press Awards Distinguished Favorite in Memoir

In this provocative and passionate memoir, Mary Stein confronts the rapidly changing status of sexual identity, marriage, parenting, and education as she recounts decades of social, ethical, and political transformations, from her childhood in rural Wisconsin to her teaching experiences in America, Greece, and Iran. After her first husbands sudden, early death in Afghanistan, she began her search for a soul mate who could provide stability and share responsibility for her young son. And that search will take the reader on an exotic and adventurous journey from New York to Crete, Jerusalem, Isfahan and finally to Thessaloniki, as her chosen partner Isaac shares her brave exploration, while living through dangerous political revolutions.
Marsha Keith Schuchard, PhD, author of Why Mrs. Blake Cried: William Blake and the Sexual Basis of Spiritual Vision and Masonic Rivalries and Literary Politics: From Jonathan Swift to Henry Fielding

Author Bio

Mary C. K. Stein is a #MeToo octogenarian who started life as a Rust Belt farmgirl and learned the hard way the pitfalls that await the poor and unprotected in their quest for upward social mobility. After working for Bell Telephone, and then as a stripper in a mob-operated show lounge, and after that as a substitute teacher in an underserved middle school in Brooklyn, she began teaching AP/IB English abroad. That work took her to six countries on five continents: Greece, Egypt, Venezuela, China, Panama, and Taiwan. She wrote Fatherless, Fearless, Female in the hopes that it will give the current womens movements their own embodiment of exploited youth, a memorable Times Up Topsy, to help focus attention on their issues and bring about social change. She lives in Reno, Nevada.