The Man Who Loved Funerals is the story of Charlie, a homeless man who reads the obituaries each day and chooses a funeral. He makes friends with the dead because he finds them dependable. Hevisits them at their graves and shares his most intimate thoughts with them. Then one day, at a funeral he meets an attractive, exciting woman, who tells himshe is dying of cancer and invites him to her funeral.They fall in love and Charlie teaches her to accept death while she teaches him to live. Lisa dies. And just as a Zen master chops wood and carries water until he reaches enlightenment and then carries water and chops wood, Charlie returns to his daily funeral, now celebrating life.
A Brief Biography of
MARYANNE RAPHAEL
The oldest of ten children, she grew up in the small Appalachian village of Waverly, Ohio (named for Sir Walter Scott's WAVERLY NOVELS.) She was constantly writing plays for all of her siblings to perform.
Her first rejection slip (from St. Anthony's Messenger) arrived when she was five years old. She had talked her grandfather into typing and mailing her story, Pray for the Wanderer. He told her a rejection slip proved she was a writer. She had written something and sent it out. That was all she had to do to be a writer. Twenty-five years later, she sold a revised version of that original short story to Catholic Digest.
At Ohio University where she majored in Creative Writing and Romance Languages, she was editor of Sphere, the literary magazine.. When she graduated, she won a scholarship to the Sorbonne in Paris. Her auto-biographical novel, UNE ANNEE A PARIS won first place from the Alliance Francaise.
After France, she went to the Caribbean where she met and married Lennox Raphael, a Trinidadian writer. They traveled together through four continents.. Their son Raphael was born in New York City.
Maryanne taught at Ohio University, the New School for Social Research in New York City, and at the University of Hawaii. She was an editor at Prentice Hall and Woman's Day Magazine.
Her first book RUNAWAYS, AMERICA'S LOST YOUTH (co-author Jenifer Wolf) (Preface Anais Nin) was republished by Authors Guild BACKINPRINT. She became a Co-Worker of Mother Teresa's and published MOTHER TERESA, CALLED TO LOVE. Then she published THE MAN WHO LOVED FUNERALS, ALEXANDRIA (co-author Patricia Walden), ALONG CAME A SPIDER, A PERSONAL LOOK AT MADNESS and ANAIS NIN, THE VOYAGE WITHIN.
Maryanne and Lennox wrote GARDEN OF HOPE, Autobiography of a Marriage, beginning it when they were a loving couple and finishing it after their divorce. Their son Raphael wrote the introduction. The book won first place as an unpublished memoir at the San Diego Awards ceremony.
What Mother Teresa Taught Me was published in September 2007 by St. Anthony's Messenger Press, the company that gave her her first rejection slip.
Create Space published Dancing On Water, a novel she wrote during the month of November 2009 for NaNoWriMo.com and Saints of Molokai.
