Odyssey of a Wandering Mind: The Strange Tale of Sara Mayfield, Author

by Jennifer Horne

A carefully rendered portrait of a brilliant but troubled daughter of the Old South who struggled against the conventions of gender, class, family, and ultimately of sanity, yet survived to define a creative life of her own
 
Sara Mayfield was born into Alabama’s governing elite in 1905 and grew up in a social circle that included Zelda Sayre, Sara Haardt, and Tallulah and Eugenia Bankhead. After winning a Goucher College short story contest judged by H. L. Mencken, Mayfield became friends with Mencken and his circle, then visited with Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald and hobnobbed with the literati while traveling in Europe after a failed marriage. Returning to Alabama during the Depression, she briefly managed the family landholdings before departing for New York City where she became involved in the theater. Inventing a plastic compound while working on theatrical sets, she applied for a patent and set her sights on a livelihood as an inventor and businesswoman. With the advent of World War II, Mayfield returned to her family home in Tuscaloosa where she expanded her experiments, freelanced as a journalist, and doggedly pursued a bizarre series of military and intelligence schemes, prompting temporary hospitalization. In 1945, she mingled with a host of cultural figures, including Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Orson Welles, Rita Hayworth, and even a young John F. Kennedy, while reporting on the creation of the United Nations from Mexico and California. Back in Tuscaloosa after the war, however, she struggled to find her way with both work and family, becoming increasingly paranoid about perceived conspiracies arrayed against her. Finally, her mother and brother committed her to Bryce Hospital for the Insane, where she remained for the next seventeen years.

Throughout her life, Mayfield kept journals, wrote fiction, and produced thousands of letters while nursing the ambition that had driven her since to write and publish books. During her confinement, Mayfield assiduously recorded her experiences and her determined efforts—sometimes delusional, always savvy—to overturn her diagnosis and return to the world as a sane, independent adult. At 59, she was released from Bryce and later obtained a decree of “having been restored to sanity,” enabling her to manage her own financial affairs and to live how and where she pleased. She went on to publish noteworthy literary biographies of the Menckens and the Fitzgeralds plus a novel based on the life of Mona Lisa, finally achieving her quest to become the author of books and her own life. In Odyssey of a Wandering Mind , noted writer Jennifer Horne draws on years of research and an intimate understanding of the vast archive Sara Mayfield left behind to sensitively render Mayfield’s struggle to move through the world as the person she was—and her ultimate success in surviving to define the terms of her story.
 

312 pages, Paperback

Published January 11, 2024

About the author

Jennifer Horne is a writer, editor, and teacher who grew up in Arkansas and has lived for many years in Alabama. Her book Working the Dirt: An Anthology of Southern Poets (2003) brought together over 100 poems about farming and gardening in the South. Her two co-edited books (with Wendy Reed), All Out of Faith: Southern Women on Spirituality (2006) and Circling Faith: Southern Women on Spirituality (2012), have received acclaim for the high quality of the essays and their contribution to discussions about religion and spirituality in the American South. Her most recent book, Tell the World You’re a Wildflower (2014) is a collection of loosely interwoven stories in the voices of southern women and girls of different ages and backgrounds. Bottle Tree (2010) is a book of poems focusing on Horne’s experiences as a southern woman; her second collection of poems, Little Wanderer, a collection of road and travel poems, will be published this summer by the Irish publisher Salmon Poetry. She is currently working on a poetry chapbook, a new collection of short stories, and a memoir-influenced book about Scott and Zelda biographer Sara Mayfield.

Reviews

[MB Heflin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Captivating story about Sara Mayfield's life, family, and her eclectic circle of famous friends!

Jennifer Horne's exhaustive research and attention to detail combined with her ability to tell a good story makes this book both informative and enjoyable.

For readers who think they already know Sara Mayfield, you will be surprised by how much you did not know about her when you read this book. For readers unfamiliar with Mayfield, you are in for a treat as Horne brings Sara's story to life.

[Carolyn Breckinridge · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jennifer Horne spent years researching the life of Author Sara Mayfield, condensing, organizing and clarifying reams of archival materials to provide readers with a succinct, compelling story of Sara's life. Born into privilege around the turn of the 20th Century, Sara struggled to find herself in a world of strictly-defined social roles for women. But this was not to be. Sara railed against social norms all her life, struggling to combat the inner turmoil this often caused. She ran in international jet set circles, befriending people like Zelda Fitzgerald and Scott, Tallulah Bankhead, H.L. Mencken, Orson Welles and young J.F. Kennedy. The price for her lifestyle was often high, including admission to Bryce, the State Hospital for the mentally ill.
This biography is more than a story of one woman's life. It speaks to a time when literary figures traversed the globe to party in Europe while women rallied for the vote and greater independence of choice in life roles. A fascinating read!

[Duke Terrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful and detailed biography of a fascinating person in Alabama (and Montgomery) history. Mayfield was a close and young friend of Tallulah Bankhead, Zelda Sayre (Fitzgerald), and Sara Haardt (Mencken)—she wrote biographies of the latter two herself. During the prime of her life, she was involuntarily committed to Bryce, a state psychiatric hospital, for nearly two decades, yet continued to research and write, and live as full of a life as possible. A MUST-READ for anyone interested in early-mid twentieth century Alabama/Montgomery history.

[Ginny Morgan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book because it was written about a woman from Alabama and it had good reviews. It was technically well-written, but the story of Sarah Mayfield’s life just wasn’t that interesting to me.