Program Description
Susan Rowland’s fictional detective Mary Wandwalker is back. Murder on Family Grounds: A Mary Wandwalker Mystery, goes back to the origin story of the triple goddess detective. ‘She’ arises in a mystery that examines the element of earth, which C. G. believed means family ground in the deep psyche. Indeed the novel not only digs into the traumatized earth of Mary, Caroline and Anna, it also mines the complex architecture of their families. Families are the ground from which our psyches grow. But what if the family of birth tries to strangle that growth in the name of social status or patriarchal inheritance?
Also, family as institution exists in the underworld as the crime family. In some cases, crime families produce children as more indentured labor. Mary Wandwalker’s quest for her own long lost son will take her to the deepest shadow of his paternal family, the Falconers. If the depth psychology shadow of patriarchal aristocracy reaches into chattel slavery, might the twentyfirst century witness the return of that repressed heritage? The sins of the past result in murder, a literal and symbolic blood letting.
Only the triple goddess, it seems, has sufficient diffused feminine powers to re-make the family. Will Mary, Caroline and Anna be able to constellate the goddess? Can power be transformed into love? Can marriage equality serve psychological and familial renewal?
Set in the United Kingdom, Susan regards this story as her tribute to marriage equality in the US and the UK. What arose from the writing methodology of Jungian Arts-Based Research are tiny, incomplete strategies acknowledging the legacy of slavery on our family ground.
About the Teacher
Susan Rowland (PhD) teaches at Pacifica Graduate Institute and is the author of ten books on Jung. For decades Susan has been working on a project to examine feminine heroism as a way to cultural renewal. Her first novel, The Sacred Well Murders, was published by Chiron in 2022. The book explores marginalized women becoming involved in epoch-defining events that entail literal and symbolic violence. Although third to be published, Murder on Family Grounds: A Mary Wandwalker Mystery, looks at how Mary, Caroline, and Anna first meet, their passionate involvement with George Jones, and how they come to be the Depth Enquiry Agency. Any resemblance to the triple goddess is entirely intentional. Susan lives in Oregon with poet, Joel Weishaus. Her website is: susanrowland-books.com
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