The Psalm of Psaint Mabel follows Mabel Wirtanen, a ham fisted Finnish masseuse from Michigan s Upper peninsula, on her quest to become a spiritual force the likes of Mother Theresa or Ghandi. The award winning novel describes an uncommonly honest middle-aged single woman s frustrating, and hilarious, journey to self-knowledge. What new fresh hell is this? she asks herself repeatedly, as she tries to make her heart and mind so pure all will recognize her spiritual glory, rendering completion of her childhood fantasy to become an American Lutheran religious celebrity, a pseudo saint. Escaping the confines of her small town, (where her dream is stifled because everyone knows her faults), for more fertile and fresh fields, Mabel takes on American economic inequities and the special justice reserved for the upper class, while working as a masseuse on a luxury island off the coast of South Florida.
Perhaps the first novel to detail the work of a massage therapist The Psalm of Psaint Mabelis also a landmark in portraying Yooperland, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. So insular a part of the USA it is sometimes left off the map by the likes of Newsweek magazine, the author gives voice to the peculiar Finnglish accent dying out with the older generation.
The string of unintended consequences as the Finnish Masseuse wrestles Beelzebub ring true in the style of great literary fiction. Dark humor acts as medicine for the soul as Mabel Wirtanen s escapades clarify her true potential during the time of the Thomas-Hill hearings and the Kennedy-Smith Palm Beach Trial, events that outed the problems of women speaking truth to power.
Will the needed Big tips corrupt her plans for even ersatz piety? She walks the razor s edge of how to work the money mojo while still appearing ethical and good. A Buddhist nun with a menagerie of stray dogs, an unhappy but sincere psychiatrist, an alcoholic New Age girlie girl, present edifying confusion into Mabel s belief in the importance of being natural while striving for unattainable moral perfection.
The story covers the lingering effects of Vietnam, date rape, spinsterhood, homelessness, euthansia, sexual harassment, Hurricane Andrew and the dream that got away.Read reviews at other book sellers sites online. Intrigued, but the book is too expensive? Encourage your local library to purchase a copy and help the author feed her dog during the coming End Times.