University of New England

Presenting Martha Tod Dudman
Black Olives

Thursday, May 1, 2008, 7-9 p.m., free and open to the public.

Compelling, touching: With all the page-turning energy of her bestselling memoir—and award-winning television movie—Augusta, Gone, Dudman chronicles with wit and candor the utterly painful emotions of a breakup. “In my thoughts I reach backward to the man I once loved. The man who delighted me. And that is the man I miss.”

Fantasy for the brokenhearted: After a chance sighting of her ex-boyfriend of ten years, Virginia, in a split second moment of sheer impulsivity and insanity, does what most of us have only dreamed of. Rather than face him, Virginia jumps unseen into the back of his pickup truck and gets a secret glimpse into the life of her former love.

A midlife love affair, a universal theme: Countless forty-, fifty-, and sixty-something women living through their own romances will find a friend in Dudman’s lovable heroine, Virginia, who at the start of the novel is, “now at forty-five, so startled and stunned by love—when I thought I was done with all that.”

PRAISE FOR BLACK OLIVES
“Smart, sad, and funny, this compulsively readable novel examines later loves and its discontents, demonstrating with wit and rue that breaking up is hard to do at any age.” – Judith Viorst

“Black Olives will turn your heart inside out with its story of lost love, aging romance, and sweet and sour sex. You'll gobble it in one great big gulp and then be furious at Martha Tod Dudman until she writes another book.” --Kitty Kelley, author of The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty

"The physical landscape of Black Olives is a small town in Downeast Maine, but the emotional landscape is that of the human heart. In particular, it is the female heart that Martha Tod Dudman so skillfully mines. If an author requires a literary vehicle to convey his or her story, then Dudman's literary vehicle is actually a Jeep Cherokee. I have always resisted the term "page-turner" because of the hype that seems to lie behind the phrase. But this book, Dear Reader, is a page-turner, right up to its lyrical and surprising end." --Cathie Pelletier, author of The Funeral Makers and Running the Bulls

Martha Tod Dudman was born in St. Louis, Missouri; grew up in Washington, DC; and went to Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. She moved to Maine in 1975, first to Little Cranberry Island, and then to Northeast Harbor, on Mount Desert Island, where she raised her son and daughter and where she still lives today. Dudman served as president and general manager of a group of radio stations in Ellsworth and Bangor for ten years, and then as a professional fundraising consultant. She is a bank director at Bar Harbor Bank & Trust. She is the author of four books: Dawn (Puckerbrush Press, 1989), Augusta, Gone (Simon & Schuster, 2001), and Expecting to Fly (Simon & Schuster, 2004). Augusta, Gone was winner of the 2002 Books for a Better Life Award and was released as a Lifetime film in 2006. Dudman’s essay, "Leaving the Island," was included in the anthology The Empty Nest (Hyperion, 2007). Her new novel, Black Olives, will be published in February 2008.

For more information, call Cally Gurley, Curator, MWWC, at 207/221-4324.