Maude by Donna Foley Mabry

Being a history buff, one of my favorite aspects of the show “Mad Men,” set in the 1960s, was how the show was often structured around historical themes and events. The characters’ reactions to the events such as, the Kennedy vs. Nixon 1960 election, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the JFK assassination, and the MLK Jr. assassination all give a look into what the world was like (or could have possibly been like, depending on your take on the historical accuracy of the show). 

The Cuban Missile Crisis had almost the entire cast of characters acting on impulses with various cheating scandals and other irrational plunges at what the characters thought might be their last moments. The JFK assassination also affected almost every character in the show with how each person handled the aftermath. I’ve always been interested in the fictional window into real historical events, especially when the events become intertwined with a good story. 

I’ve always loved hearing people’s life stories, particularly when the story is about an otherwise ordinary person’s life, yet told in a way that speaks to that person’s significance related to other people or historical events. It always blows my mind to consider that a person who has lived to be 100 years old today has lived through over 40 percent of the history of the United States. 

Because I’ve always liked these types of stories, I picked up a book called Maude by Donna Foley Mabry. The book is a retelling of the life story of a woman born in 1892 named Maude Foley, a plain and simple woman, written by her granddaughter. The book is told through Maude’s perspective and starts when she is about seven and ends in 1960—spanning a significant time in history. 

Maude has 4.4/5 stars on Amazon with over 13,000 reviews and was a Wall Street Journal Bestseller. Side note: I’ve always wondered what it takes to get on the different bestseller lists. What is the difference between the New York Times Bestseller list and say, the Washington Post’s or Wall Street Journal’s lists? Anyways, the book was a really interesting read and often felt like a grandparent recounting life stories to you on the porch.

The book follows Maude’s life from when she was forced to deliver her older sister's baby at the age of seven, only hours of learning that both her parents were killed in a house fire that consumed their wooden home. 

One of the things that I thought was most interesting about the book was the depiction of the gender relations, especially in marriage. Things were so different. It seems otherworldly—and it wasn’t that long ago, really. Maude was forced to drop out of school and be a wife because of her arranged marriage at the age of sixteen. A few months later, she had a baby girl with her new husband. Still sixteen years old, Maude’s husband was killed by a baseball pitch to the head during a barnyard baseball game. 

“I’d already been an orphan, a wife, and a mother. Now I was a widow. I was only three months past my sixteenth birthday.” 

A few years later, Maude’s best friend’s brother came into town to try and court her to be his wife. She saw him at church first, then he visited her at her house the next afternoon. He invited her to go for a ride in his horse-led buggy, but she said she couldn’t because her daughter was getting home from school soon. After hearing that he liked to drink beer occasionally, Maude didn’t like him instantly, but was too polite to tell him not to come back the next day. The next day, she agreed to go on a ride in the buggy with the guy. All of a sudden, when she got back from the ride her neighbor asked her when the wedding was. Everyone in the western Tennessee town assumed that Maude was going to marry this man simply because she went on an “unchaperoned” ride in the buggy and half the town saw them. Three days later, despite neither the man nor Maude wanting to, they got married. After going out alone with him without a chaperone, Maude would have been excommunicated from her church and outcast from the town. So, after three conversations in total, Maude was married to this random guy who she knew nothing about. 

Maude soon realized that she hated her new husband. The secret to every happy marriage. He was lazy, he drank, he didn’t go to church, and after moving to Missouri following the wedding, learned that not only did the man’s mom lived with him, but the mom wanted her dead and even tried to kill Maude multiple times. Despite all of this dislike, they stayed married through four children, two World Wars, the Great Depression, practically walking from Missouri to Detroit, and constant unhappiness. 

Throughout the book, Maude gives details about conversations with other women and her own thoughts about historical events. There is a story about how her husband discouraged her from voting in 1920 when she was first allowed to. Yet, she had read the newspaper every day since gaining the right to vote and knew more about the election than her husband. Maude tells about learning how almost no women voted in that election because their husbands forbid them to go or beat them to keep them from going. In World War II, it was interesting how Maude described how her and all of her neighbors were extremely conscious about the wartime effort, completely buying into the phrase, “use it up, wear it out, make it do.” It's hard to imagine people around the country today having the same attitudes. Or, how her daughter had gotten a job in an automobile factory working next to men—something that Maude never thought was possible until that moment in 1944. 

Reflecting on the book, I could not imagine getting married to someone after knowing them for a mere three days. Imagine going to get coffee or drinks with a person and within a week you are married. I’d frequent divorce court more than Larry King (who somehow still believes in marriage after being divorced six times). Eventually, Maude did divorce her husband when she was in her late 70s. However, at that time, her life was lived. In a pessimistic tone, Maude reflects, 

“I think now God gives each of us a measure of happiness for our lives, and some are allowed more than others.” 

In total, they were married for almost 50 years and she never loved him. All of those years as a result of an unchaperoned ride around the town. While certainly grateful for blessings throughout the years, the end of the book is full of “what ifs,” with Maude expressing regret for how her life was lived out. The book ends with this sentiment that I feel like many people of her generation probably felt, 

“I’ve heard people say they had no regrets in their lives. I wish I could have said that, but there were so many regrets, so many mistakes.”

And that's the way I read it.