Odysseus & Me

With her poetic memoir, Mary Overly Davis is out to prove Homer is still relevant. Odysseus & Me spans twenty years of her life, from the death of her husband in 2003 to the present. He died after a six-year battle with a brain tumor, leaving Davis a single mother, inexperienced in courtship, and an uncomfortable inhabitant of the scorching Southern Bible Belt. Although Davis is neither a Homer scholar nor poet, while reading The Odyssey a midnight epiphany led her to recognize that people in her life resembled every Homeric god, goddess, mortal, and monster in the book. After several misfortunes with lovers, friends, and family left her reeling from emotional storms, she found herself asking, "What would Odysseus do?"

Borrowing Homer's poetic devices--descriptive similes, exhaustive speeches, and all-encompassing repetition-Davis takes readers on her own long, strange trip, telling her tale by turns with biting wit, grace, and tenderness. Aligning all twenty-four books of The Odyssey with outlandish locations, immortal gods and goddesses, mortal characters and experiences of her own, she explores the transient nature of human relationships. It's a story of heartbreak, love, and coming to terms with one's innate character. It is also a story about an ordinary life. And some of it is true.

About the Author
After bouncing around Austin, Texas, New Orleans, and New York City for half a century, Mary Overly Davis settled on a small hamlet in the Catskill Mountains of New York to stake her claim. She dabbles in several creative pursuits, works on her golf handicap, walks her dog, and travels. This is her first book.

Praise for Odysseus & Me:

BY DANIEL CATTAU
Anyone who has spent time in Texas has seen the bumper sticker "WWJD," or "What would Jesus do?" Posing a more unusual question, Mary Overly Davis, an adventurous native Texan, has written a poetic memoir asking, "What would Odysseus do?"

Using free form verse, Davis follows Homer's structure and fills her story with mortals and immortals, ill-suited suitors and feckless friends, personal travails and stories of loss, but her heroine adds to the legend by smoking a joint while golfing, drinking margaritas, cussing when justified, and listening to Patsy Cline.

Her poetry comes from the many vivid descriptions of the natural world: "When primal dawn's light tipped over the eastern hill with her nimble fingers of pink..."

Davis's stated goal is to free herself and adult daughter from the painful past. "When your daughter finds her footing, you will find your true direction."

I re-read Homer's Odyssey before taking on Odysseus & Me, both good refresher courses on the importance of taking our own journeys seriously.

(Daniel Cattau, former religion editor of the Dallas Morning News, was an editor of Jonathan Eig's acclaimed biography King: A Life.)