The non-fiction is the story of The Billy Riordan Memorial Clinic, founded by Riordan's mother in Cape Maclear, Malawi, Africa.
Popular area author Suzanne Strempek Shea releases her 10th book this month, "This is Paradise: An Irish mother's grief, an African village's plight and the medical clinic that brought fresh hope to both."
The non-fiction is the story of The Billy Riordan Memorial Clinic, founded by Riordan's mother in Cape Maclear, Malawi, Africa. The Irish born Riordan drowned in the village in 1999. The clinic was established, in his memory, 10 years ago, and has served more than one-quarter of a million people, in an area traditionally served by one doctor for more than three-quarter of a million people.
This year is a busy one for Shea, writer-in-residence and director of the creative writing program at Bay Path College, in Longmeadow, who will serve as emcee of the college's 19th annual Women's Leadership Conference on April 25 at the MassMutual Center. Its theme is "Own Your Own Story," and the featured speaker is pioneering broadcast journalist Barbara Walters. In the fall, Shea will release her sixth novel, "Make a Wish But Not For Money," about a palm reader in a "dead mall," and before that has monthly readings scheduled for "This is Paradise."
It is almost 20 years ago that Shea published her first book, "Selling the Lite of Heaven," to much acclaim. The resident of the Bondsville section of Palmer has shared many of her experiences, during the last two decades, through her non-fiction books, including her 2002 "Songs from a Lead-Line Room: Notes, High and Low, From My Journey Through Breast Cancer," the 2004 "Shelf Life: Romance, Mystery, Drama and Other Page Turning Adventures From a Year in a Bookstore," and her 2009 "Sundays in America: A Yearlong Road Trip in Search of Christian Faith."
Her novels include "Hoopi, Shoopi Donna," published in 1996, whose title character plays the accordion, like Shea, the 1999 "Lily of the Valley," and the 2010 "Around Again."
Married to Tom Shea, the former, long-time, award-winning columnist for The Republican, the couple, along with author Michele P. Barker, wrote “140 Years of Providential Caring" for the Sisters of Providence of Holyoke.
Shea will debut her book on April 23 at 7 p.m. at Broadside Bookshop, 247 Main St., Northampton, in a reading and signing that will also feature poet Kathleen Aguero, author of "After That."
Shea, who spent more than three years doing research for "This is Paradise," is donating a portion of the proceeds from her book to the clinic. Mags Riordan, who established the clinic, said she felt her son would be "very pleased at what has happened in the village" in terms of the clinic's impact.
"He was very attached to the place having made three separate trips there," Riordan, a former guidance counselor from County Kerry, Ireland, said.
For more information, visit http://www.suzannestrempekshea.com/
The following is an edited interview with Shea about her newest book. She noted the villagers of Cape Maclear, population 15,000, have five cars, and face a 90 percent unemployment rate.
What led to the establishment of the clinic?
Twenty-five year old Dingle resident Billy Riordan was a world traveler when not working at his father's hostel in Dingle. On the first night of his third trip to Cape Maclear, Malawi, in 1999, he entered massive Lake Malawi and drowned. When Mags visited the Cape a year later, to place a memorial stone in his honor, she noted the poor state of the schools, but then became aware of the lack of any healthcare when a villager, thinking a visitor might have a first aid kid, brought to her a boy who'd injured his leg.
The closest medical facility is roughly 11 miles away, down a very corrugated road that can wash out in the rainy season. It's not exaggerating to say that a simple untreated infection might lead to death. Mags realized that over several visits, and raised funds to build the clinic that opened in 2004.
What made you feel there was a book story to be told about it?
There are so many aspects to this story that have you shaking your head for both the hardships Mags and the people of Cape Maclear have faced, and face, and there are so many wonderful points to celebrate. This is a story about one woman's attempts to bring change to a community. She knew nothing about starting a clinic, and, yes, her father had been a physician, but she knew nothing about medicine. She knew only that creating a clinic would save lives.
Mags has done this with some very personal experiences of loss. Billy actually was the third child Mags lost over 26 years, her first child – daughter Niamh - drowned at four months when the family car malfunctioned and rolled off a pier, and her second child, Luke, was a crib death, also at four months.
I thought Mags’ story would make a strong magazine piece about motherhood, grief, healing, moving outside the comfort zone, and how one person can change one part of our world. The clinic serves 150 people a day, in a catchment area where there was one doctor for 800,000 people. Villagers died regularly, even from complications related to the slightest infection. My husband, Tommy Shea, who always has the better idea, said, “That’s not a magazine piece, that’s a book.”
How has the clinic's story evolved since it opened?
Now care is less than a mile from either end of town, available 24 hours a day. It's also a rare source of employment for villagers.
The doctors and nurses continue to be all volunteer and all from other countries, but the idea is to have the clinic taken over one day by professionals from the village. And some residents have been inspired to train as medical professionals, so that possibility is slowly coming. It's also doubled in size over the 10 years, thanks to an addition that includes a laboratory and a beds for overnight care. Services, including an HIV/AIDS clinic and a porridge distribution for children five and under, have been added, and eye care has just become available.
What work went into telling the clinic's story? Where did it take you geographically and who are a few of the people in the book?
I traveled for interviews to Cape Maclear once, to Dingle and Dublin twice, and to West Springfield more than a few times (Mags, a regular visitor to the Eastern States Exposition's Big E, for fund-raising, stays with the Meserve family in the town).
I went through library archives in Ireland, read a stack of books and prowled about online for all kinds of info, data and details. Some of the subjects include Mags' mother and sister, retired nurse and current world-traveler Kitty Dillon, who lives in Dingle; her sister, Cathy Dillon, in Dublin, a writer for The Irish Times; her good friend Steve Free, project manager in Cape Maclear and her right-hand man; a variety of volunteer doctors and nurses, including a pair of medical students from Australia and a nurse from England inspired to travel by an uncle who had a map of the world stuck with pins designating the places he'd been; and villagers, including Justice Chiphwanya, 24, who works in reception and in his spare time has founded two churches in the village that has 15 places of worship.
A Cape resident, lucky enough to have a regularly scheduled paying job, typically supports an average of 11 people, and Justice is no exception. “I like the income for my life and my relatives,” he says. “I’m supporting my child and two brothers for school. I volunteer my life for them now.”
What did you learn from writing the book?
I had the great honor of really getting to follow, observe, talk to, talk about and pick the brain of a woman who had an idea and went forth with it - to such astounding results. I learned so much about my subject, both what she did and who she is as a real person.
This isn't a woman behind a desk all day, or someone who puts a few hours of time into a charitable effort once a month. This has become Mags Riordan's life -- getting someone to fix a plumbing problem, haggle with an insurer, check on a patient. I was floored by the dawn-to-duskness of her work, but also astounded by the great energy and enthusiasm with which she approaches it all.
How do you hope the book will help the clinic, and what do you hope it will impart to readers?
I hope it will tell people about this particular clinic, give them an example of what they might do to help at the Cape (healthcare professionals always are needed as volunteers, for periods of four months or more; laypeople are needed for office work, landscaping, and more - check the website: www.billysmalawiproject.org or, for general information, www.billysmalawiprojectusa.org.
We can't all start a clinic, but we might be able to regularly pick up trash, walk a pound pup, collect food for a pantry, tutor a child, knit a blanket.
How much do you enjoy moving from fiction to nonfiction in writing a book? Is your palm book mainly ficition?
I really like writing both fiction and nonfiction. With a background as a reporter, nonfiction is my first love. But, it was when I was put on a night shift that I began writing fiction in my spare time. It's great to get to go back and forth between genres, between making nothing up, and getting to make up anything and everything.
"Make a Wish But Not for Money," about a palm reader in a down-and-out shopping mall, will be out Oct. 5, from PFP Publishing, and it's fictional, except for the idea of a "dead mall," a nickname anyone familiar with the old Mountain Farms Mall along Hadley's Route 5 will know. I did borrow some details and vibe from the excitement of the 1967 opening of the Eastfield Mall, in my neck of the woods - what a big deal that was.