Authors Interviewing Characters: Martha Engber

SCATTERED LIGHT

Second book in the Mary Donahue Chronicles, and sequel to the award-winning YA novel, WINTER LIGHT.

When 36-year-old attorney Mary Donahue of Chicago meets the surprising man of her dreams, she discovers that to love is to risk learning who you really are and what happened to you.

SCATTERED LIGHT is the sequel to WINTER LIGHT, an IPPY Gold Medal winner in YA, in which wild child teen Mary fights to save herself during the blizzard winter of 1978-79 from the poverty and addiction that plague her family. Only when the real storm hits does she learn how little distance exists between success and failure, life and death.

SCATTERED LIGHT begins in 1999. After years of insulating herself from further physical, emotional and financial harm, Mary falls in love with a humble, but world-famous Ugandan human rights lawyer who barely escaped Idi Amin’s butcherous regime.

When his life is endangered, Mary has no choice but to fight for him as she once did for her teen self. Almost losing him dredges up the trauma of her youth, a festering wound that can only be healed by an apparent enigma: to protect herself, she has to bare her soul.

Hair-raising, yet inspiring, SCATTERED LIGHT is about learning that to fully love others, you have to love yourself.

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Note from the Editor:

The Chicago Tribune Magazine first published the following interview with Mary Donahue, a labor lawyer with Lewandowski & Murphy, in the March 1999 Women’s History Month issue. The piece received hundreds of comments from readers.

In light of the dramatic events that ensued the following year involving her husband, renown human rights attorney Damba Rugundi, and the resulting extraordinary efforts of Ms. Donahue, the magazine is, with permission from her, reprinting the transcript.

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March 4, 1999

Martha Engber: Thank you for sitting for this interview. While you’ve won a number of high-profile labor law cases, including the Washington National Bank v. Hennessey, which changed the national conversation about sexual harassment in the workplace, I hear you’re reluctant to take interviews.

Mary Donahue: That’s true. As a kid with three older brothers, I learned pretty quick that the more you talk, the more likely it is you’ll say something stupid.

Martha Engber: So why talk with me today?

Mary Donahue: Because of the topic you pitched, writing a series of stories about “strong women.”

Martha Engber: You must have some strong feelings about the subject to overcome your reluctance to interviews.

Mary Donahue: That’s very true.

Martha Engber: Explain your thinking.

Mary Donahue: After you called, I got to thinking about the end result: a fluffy article accompanied by a professional headshot of me, all very elegant. I imagined women looking at the headline and the photo, and maybe being somewhat inspired, but then way back in their minds, bashing themselves over the head because they didn’t achieve this or that, and the reason must be because they’re weak. They aren’t smart enough or have enough willpower or exercise good judgment.

So I wanted to come and say, all of that…it’s just not true.

In fact, the notion of “strong women” is a fiction, just as glamorizing people like me — those of us who maybe have some showy credentials — is fiction. It only serves to make women feel worse about themselves. They might be left with that nagging feeling of, Why didn’t I do that?

I believe that people — all people — do the best they can to solve their problems. Some succeed and some don’t. If they do fail, it’s not because they’re “weak.” It’s because they didn’t get the help they needed when they needed it.

Martha Engber: I sense you’re talking about your own youth.

Mary Donahue: I suppose you’re right. I don’t hide the fact that I grew up in a ramshackle house in the suburbs. My mother died when I was five, which left my dad to take care of three unruly boys and me, who might have been the most trouble of all. Did my dad have enough know-how and money to raise us like Fred McMurray in My Three Sons? Did he have the education to advance beyond being a blue-collar union man? Did he get the counseling he needed to work through his grief of losing his wife? No. What he got was some pats on the back and casseroles.

So I grew up out of the ensuing dysfunction. And I certainly wouldn’t have gotten to where I am now if I hadn’t run into my good friend — my now good friend — Kathleen. She was in my English class when I was a sophomore. She was a kid who came from a nice family. Mom and Dad who cared about her. Nice home. Brought up with the idea she not only would go to college, but was required to.

For some reason, on a particular day in winter — I still remember it clearly — I looked at her. I mean, really looked at her. And all I could think was, this chick is from another planet.

You’re laughing, but I’m serious!

Everything about her was so different, and I got to wondering why that was. So I chatted her up. I wasn’t quite so diplomatic in those days, and it didn’t go well. In fact, she hated my guts. But I kept at her until she helped me learn how to study and get into better classes and stuff like that. Her whole family kind of took me under their wing, and I just…

Sorry. I just need a second…

So yeah. Without her help — without their help and that of everyone along the way — I’m sure I’d be dead, and I don’t say that for the sake of drama.

I guess that’s my point. I was really trying to get by in life and do the best I could with what I had, but I was still failing. Was it because I was weak? I don’t think so. I think it’s because I needed help, and a lot of it. I was lucky enough to find people who gave it to me.

Martha Engber: So your definition of a strong woman is one who asks for help?

Mary Donahue: That’s very astute of you. Yes. That’s what I would say. What makes a person strong is their ability to ask for help, and then actually take it.

Out of curiosity, what else did you hear about me?

Martha Engber: That when you get upset, which is apparently not often, you swear like a sailor.

Mary Donahue: (laughing) You got me!

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Tags: featured, women writers

Category: Interviews