Award-winning Vero Beach author Mary Calhoun Brown has written a novel of her own, translated a classic into southern colloquialism and developed a guide on how to open a clinic for addicted babies, based on her own non-profit clinic in Huntington, West Virginia.
It is her latest work, though, a paperback guide to Vero called “50 Reasons to Love Vero Beach and the Treasure Coast,” that has taken the longest, at least in terms of research. Brown has been visiting Vero Beach with her family for years. “I have pictures of my kids growing up on the beaches here,” she says.
One has to wonder if there is “something in the water” in the Old Riomar area, where Brown and her husband, W. Campbell Brown Jr., recently purchased a home. Whether by choice or by chance, Brown has settled into an area rich with artists and authors from the past and present; author Suzan Phillips spent her formative years just down the street and the Sandfly Scribblers, a local writing group, meets nearby to collaborate and share creative support.
With the youngest of their three sons heading off to college this fall, the couple decided it was time to make their home in a place where the boys and their future families would be drawn to visit.
“We love our little town in West Virginia, but who wouldn’t pick the beach over dreary winter weather?” asks Brown.
While overseeing the remodeling of their new home, Brown took up daily excursions to find things for her sons to do when they visited.
“We would spend a week here and not leave the beach,” she says. “I couldn’t believe how much there was to see and do.”
“I started making little notes to myself. One night my husband said ‘Why don’t you just write a book?’”
“Fifty Reasons to Love Vero Beach & the Treasure Coast” is organized as a photo essay, the insight of someone discovering Vero.
Her awe of the natural beauty and history of Vero Beach are apparent through her descriptions. Since the book was published, she’s already come across more she would love to add. “And I still have plenty to learn about the area.”
She’s even included a postcard hoping to elicit suggestions, for use in an update or expanded version.
A graduate of Marshall University in journalism and mass communications, she went on to write for the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce before staying home to raise her three sons.
Brown co-wrote two financial planning books with her husband, a financial adviser, and then went on to write a novel. “There Are No Words” won 11 literary awards, she says, most notably an IBBY, the Swiss award for books for young people; and an Eric Hoffer award.
Her inspiration came from her own family. Brown’s oldest son has Asperger syndrome. Picked on in middle school, she home-schooled him for seventh and eighth grade, an experience Brown calls both “terrifying and very fulfilling.”
When her son was ready to go back to school, Brown faced a dilemma. “All my kids were now in school. How do you redefine yourself as a mom?” she recalls asking.
The answer was right in front of her. She wrote “There Are No Words” straight from the heart, as she puts it.
The story is told from the perspective of a non-verbal autistic girl who, after falling back in time through a painting, can communicate for the first time in her life.
After the book’s success, Brown decided to take on another passion: Jane Austen.
Austen fans call themselves Janeites; Brown is a self-proclaimed Janeiac. What better way to pay homage to her literary hero than to create a modern version of “Pride and Prejudice”? Brown’s “Pride and Prejudice with a Side of Grits” was a translation of sorts, written in what Brown calls “hillbilly” and southern colloquialism.
Hers wasn’t the first novel to emulate Austen’s work; there are a number of variations on “Pride and Prejudice,” including one with zombies and another with vampires. Still, Brown’s version earned a mention in an article on the topic in the news magazine The Week. It quoted her opening line: “’Jest ’bout everybody ’round here knows that if’n a feller’s got two cents to rub together, he’s a-lookin’ fer a right-nice girl to git hitched to.’”
Brown chuckles. “As they say in the literary world, it was not well received. I was just being funny. Where else but in rural Appalachia can you have a woman trying to marry off her five teenage daughters? The only character that stays exactly the same is Mary, the quirky one. She’s the one I wanted to be autistic.”
Brown says it’s easier to laugh about her “flop” now, but she would write the same book if she had it to do all over again if for no other reason than she enjoyed it. “There were times when I was writing that I would have to stop and just laugh at how hilarious I am. The true joy – as any writer will tell you – is in the writing.”
When the vivacious writer found herself between projects again, she decided to volunteer at a hospital calming drug addicted babies in a rocking chair. In West Virginia, one in 12 babies are born addicted to drugs, the third highest rate in the U.S.
Brown dealt with one mother so desperate for drugs that she used gasoline to break down stolen cancer medication.
“These babies needed 24-hour care and would be sent home with mothers who couldn’t even take care of themselves. Something needed to be done, but there wasn’t any place for these babies to go.”
In 2013, Brown and a nurse friend, Sara Murray, opened Lily’s Place, a new model of care for babies born drug-addicted. Their model for a residential infant recovery center that also helps families is gaining attention across the nation as the number of babies born with addiction has quadrupled in the past decade.
To fill the growing need for care, Brown wrote “How to Create a Neonatal Withdrawal Center.” The book takes nonprofits through the step-by-step process of developing a nurturing center.
If you missed her recent book signings for “50 Reasons,” you can still pick up a copy at the Vero Beach Book Center, Heritage Center, Ocean Grill restaurant, Countryside Citrus or on Kindle and Amazon.
