now a law librarian in Washington, DC. She received her BA from Boston University, her JD from the University of Oregon, and her MFA in Writing for Children from The New School.Thompson applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Amy Chelsea Stacie Dee, and reported the following:
On page 69, Amy, who has recently come home after being held captive for six years, is thinking about her father and comparing him to her kidnapper.Visit Mary G. Thompson's website.He always listened when I talked.Amy is being more contemplative here than is typical. The nature of love versus obsession is a theme in the book, but more importantly, Amy’s story is about surviving unthinkable circumstances without losing oneself and about the balance between selflessness and survival. For Amy, the past six years hold dangerous secrets, but a normal future is at times just as terrifying. How can she go on with life as if her ordeal is over, when she knows that for others, it might never end?
He smiled a lot.
He was a real father. The kind every kid deserved to have. The kind who doesn’t have moods, doesn’t lash out, doesn’t punish them by tossing their food. Doesn’t hit them. The kind who loves his kids’ mother for all the right reasons, who loves her because of who she really is.
There’s another kind of love. It’s the way you love the things you own, like your sports car or your favorite outfit—or your dolls. Some people would say it’s not really love at all. But they never saw the way Kyle looked at Stacie. They never saw the way he held Lola in his arms and smiled, the way his eyes lit up as he told her what a precious little doll she was. How angry he became when we didn’t act like dolls were supposed to. There’s a kind of love that’s just like hate, that won’t let go, that doesn’t give but only takes.
That wasn’t the way my dad loved me, or the way my dad loved my mom, once.
--Marshal Zeringue
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