As America exploded into the swinging sixties, nine-year-old Mary Patricia's parents fled their old melting pot neighborhood to join the upwardly mobile members of the cocktail generation. Abandoned at seventeen when her family moves yet again, Mary Patricia is left to ride out a tsunami of struggle, including lying about her age in order to land a job working for the Chicago Mafia. Gut instinct tells her that she is in imminent danger and she escapes, to the counterculture of Southern California in the early 1970s and then a jubilant Bicentennial Manhattan. Her tenacious pursuit of a college degree takes her north to Vermont, where she hopes for a stable life when she marries and has three sons. It's a Pyrrhic victory as she confronts a string of calamities, including divorce, catastrophic illness and her parents' deaths after 9/11. Rising from the ashes, she and her husband reunite and Mary Patricia finally gets what she so richly deserves: The time of her life. "Spanning fifty years, Fading Past is by turns funny, poignant, and heart-rending-a tale of two centuries as eloquent as it is finely wrought." Bestselling author James M. Tabor author of The Deep Zone and Forever on the Mountain. "Mary Kathleen Mehuron's honest, memoir-like novel, Fading Past, tells the epic story of Mary Patricia Toohey, whose story bridges a half century of American history. It's a clear-eyed yet kind-hearted examination of friendship, family ties, marriage, and courage, by a serious and thoughtful writer who knows whereof she speaks." Howard Frank Mosher, award winning and bestselling author of A Stranger in the Kingdom and Where the Rivers Flow North. "Mehuron's debut contains all of the elements that readers' of women's fiction look for - family entanglements, loves gained and lost, the search to recapture youth, and the rewards and forfeits of friendship." Nanci Milone-Hill author of Reading Women: A Book Club Guide for Women's Fiction. "I couldn't put it down. I read for hours, and when I finished, I wandered around for a while, still living with Mary Patricia and her family. . . so well written and a truly interesting story. Reeve Lindbergh author of Under a Wing and Forward From Here: Leaving Middle Age and Other Unexpected Adventures.