Jan Maher

Fiction and plays about the extraordinary lives of ordinary people

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Jan Maher

Jan Maher
photo by Trish Crapo for the Recorder

JAN MAHER, a native of central Indiana, now lives in the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts. Her novel Heaven, Indiana was named a 2018 Kirkus Best. A companion work, Earth as It Is, was named to Kirkus Best Indies of 2017 and won the 2018 American Fiction Award in the LGBT category.

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Works

The Persistence of Memory and Other Stories

"Elegantly written tales laced with melancholy and mischief." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Heaven, Indiana

"A lush, multilayered portrait of the cycle of life." —Arthur C. Jones

Earth As It Is

"A captivating novel." —Historical Novel Society

Most Dangerous Women

a documentary performance with music of the international women's peace movement

More Works

Selected Works

Fiction

Heaven, Indiana

One hot week in August 1954, in Heaven, Indiana, a baby is delivered twice: once in a barn by her grandfather, the second time to the tent door of a carnival fortune-teller by her grandmother Helen...

"Once I started reading Heaven I couldn't stop reading and thinking about it…Maher's work is…richly evocative, both rooted and visionary."
- Susan Koppelman

"This little bit of Heaven…leaves us wanting more."
- Wendy Fawthrop, Seattle Union Record

Earth As It Is

Charlie/Charlene Bader is a heterosexual cross-dresser who struggles through the humiliating break-up of a marriage, migrates to Chicago during the Depression where s/he discovers a supportive community of cross-dressers, serves as a dentist in World War II, and ultimately ends up in a small town in Indiana, living as a woman and working as a hairdresser. Her life becomes complicated when she realizes she has fallen in love with a customer who does not know of her male identity.
"Transportive" - Publishers Weekly
"Deserves a place on library shelves." - Booklist
Kirkus Reviews 100 Best Indies of 2017

"Dancing in the Dark"

Victor and Claire, about to be ex-spouses, find themselves stuck in an elevator on the way to meet with their attorneys. Then the lights go out.

"Turn, Turn, Turn"

"The woman he is looking for now is the one who can call him Bob, or even Baby, without offending him. Where is she? He opens the refrigerator. Not in there. He closes the refrigerator. It’s the refrigerator they bought the day that plane blew up over Scotland. That was on the news when we brought it in and…there’s something else he is trying to remember." - See more at: http://www.persimmontree.org/v2/fall-2010/turn-turn-turn/#sthash.F1ECMbi5.dpuf

Theater

Most Dangerous Women: Bringing History to Life through Readers' Theater

"An extraordinary assemblage of women speak about war and peace. They speak in clear and compelling language, often with song and poetry, and what they tell their audience both educates and inspires. If Most Dangerous Women were performed in schools across the country, we might well see a new generation of young people dedicated to ending the scourge of war." - Howard Zinn, Author of A People's History of the United States

Intruders and Ismene

MYRNA: I'll admit the knife seems real. But many dreams have a quality of intense reality about them.
INTRUDER: So how do you know whether you're alone dreaming I'm holding a knife to your throat or whether I'm holding a knife to your throat while you dream of the possibility of being alone?
MYRNA: The old butterfly/man dilemma.
INTRUDER: The very one.
MYRNA: What if we are both alone dreaming each other?

Quick Links

D. Hart St. Martin's website

Amanda Sarasien's website

Reviews, translations, commentary

Meet the Author

Jackson Baer's interview with me on his website

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Authors Guild Directory

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