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Mary Morony

Goodreads Author

Born

in Charlottesville, VA, The United States

Website

https://www.marymorony.com

Twitter

marymorony1

Genre

Fiction, Historical Fiction, Ebooks

Member Since

May 2014

URL

https://www.goodreads.com/goodglenda

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Mary Morony is a Southern Fiction Novelist and author of Apron Strings and Done Growed Up, the first two books in her Apron Strings Trilogy. She is also a contributing columnist for Albemarle Magazine and Keswick Life Magazine and she maintains a consistent and entertaining blog on her website http://marymorony.com

Mary delivers a tour de force of honest characters, lively humor, and heartbreaking tragedy. She writes her novels in a candid voice, refusing to sugarcoat anything. She brings Southern charm, irreverence and wit to bear against subjects as vast as racism and as personal as alcoholism, always with a heart and soul that makes her work undeniably appealing.

Her Apron Strings trilogy, a series of novels that moves from the South to Ne Mary Morony is a Southern Fiction Novelist and author of Apron Strings and Done Growed Up, the first two books in her Apron Strings Trilogy. She is also a contributing columnist for Albemarle Magazine and Keswick Life Magazine and she maintains a consistent and entertaining blog on her website http://marymorony.com

Mary delivers a tour de force of honest characters, lively humor, and heartbreaking tragedy. She writes her novels in a candid voice, refusing to sugarcoat anything. She brings Southern charm, irreverence and wit to bear against subjects as vast as racism and as personal as alcoholism, always with a heart and soul that makes her work undeniably appealing.

Her Apron Strings trilogy, a series of novels that moves from the South to New York City and back between the 1950s and the early 21st century, draws on the life she knew growing up in Charlottesville, Virginia, at a time when Virginia was still very much a part of the Jim Crow South.

One of six children, Mary was born into a family and a culture that would give her some of her best material. It was a time and place of segregated schools and water fountains, as well as restaurants and movie theaters that prohibited black customers. With five siblings in a household of dysfunctional adults Morony’s survival skills came to include a sharply honed sense of humor, which she herself has called her greatest talent and her biggest foible.

But amid the chaos, the woman who was the family servant also became Morony’s inspiration, teaching her love and acceptance with warmth, humor, and unending patience – and becoming the model, finally, for a central character in Apron Strings.

Morony has crammed more into one lifetime than most people would in five -- married four times by the age of 35, divorced three times and widowed once, she finds no shortage of material for her novels in the everyday lives around her. Keep your eyes open, she says, and you’ll find tragedy at a wedding and hilarity at a funeral.

Morony says she likes big projects, has a hard time reining herself in – “ask anybody who knows me” – and seldom does things in a conventional time frame. This may account for her not having finished her B.A. – in English, with a concentration in creative writing, from the University of Virginia – until she was in her forties, by then with four children: one in graduate school, one a sophomore in college, one in high school, and the youngest in nursery school.

“Funerals, you’d be surprised,” she says. “I see some of my favorite human interactions at a funeral – there’s an honesty there that you don’t find in other gatherings. My mantra is: If it doesn’t kill you, it will make a good story – and even if it does kill you, it will make a good story for someone! I can and have found things to laugh about in death, divorce, mental illness, and most of all, people’s pettiness – including my own.”
Telling stories, Morony says, became her lifeline for survival over a lifetime. With alcoholism and bipolar disorder in her family, with deaths and divorces, and children of her own to raise and educate, she says, “I have lived a life chock full of stories, and I do mean chock full.”

Her husband Ralph, of now almost 30 years, came into her life from Ireland – “I had to import him!” she jokes – between marriages. Like the four children he helped raise – three from her earlier marriages – and their menagerie of dogs, he is well acquainted with her relentless sense of humor – even if, she points out, she may be the only one laughing. A sense of humor, however, actually seems to be a shared family trait, since even after decades together, he still makes her laugh – “that is, when I don’t want to dismember him for some reason or another.”
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Mary Morony’s books

Average rating: 3.57 · 841 ratings · 101 reviews · 10 distinct works • Similar authors

	Apron Strings 3.54 avg rating — 788 ratings — published 2014 — 6 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Done Growed Up (Apron Strings Trilogy Book 2) 3.92 avg rating — 26 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Done Growed Up 4.14 avg rating — 14 ratings — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	If It Ain’T One Thing . . . 3.50 avg rating — 4 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	If It Ain’t One Thing . . . 4.33 avg rating — 3 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	If It Ain't One Thing 4.50 avg rating — 2 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Done Growed Up: Book 2 in the Apron Strings Trilogy 4.50 avg rating — 2 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Apron Strings: A Novel really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 2 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	If It Ain’t One Thing . . . 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Apron Strings (Apron Strings Trilogy) by Mary Morony (2014-03-05) by Mary Morony (Goodreads Author), Unknown Author 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Mary Morony's Blog

If It Ain’t One Thing On The 2018 BookViral Award Short List

Much to my delight, the third novel in my Southern Fiction Apron Strings Trilogy If It Ain’t One Thing has earned a place on The 2018 BookViral Award Short List.[image error]

BookViral’s Millennium Book Award entries are initially limited to 1000 books. Since it is estimated that between 600,000 and a million books are released each year in the US alone, getting n the long list is a pretty big dea

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Costa Rican Spanish Phrasebook 4 (Lonely Planet Phrasebooks) (Spanish Edition)

by Lonely Planet

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Dec 07, 2015 01:38PM

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Become a SuperLearner: Learn Speed Reading & Advanced Memorization

by Jonathan A. Levi

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Apr 26, 2019 12:54PM

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How to Develop a Brilliant Memory Week by Week: 50 Proven Ways to Enhance Your Memory Skills

by Dominic O'Brien

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Dec 07, 2015 01:17PM

Quotes by Mary Morony (?)

“without much fanfare. My mother invited the usual neighborhood kids over, but fewer of them showed up than in previous years.”
― Mary Morony, Apron Strings

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“than I needs a drink. Change comes slow, but it do”
― Mary Morony, Apron Strings

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“remembered Stuart did when she wore it. “Think I can wear this one?” “Is too big. I ‘spect Stuart gonna be fighting with ya mama ‘bout wearing”
― Mary Morony, Apron Strings

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