THE LANDLADY OF MAPLE AVENUE - THE NOVEL

THE LADYLADY OF MAPLE AVENUE is a historical fiction family saga inspired by true stories about a multi-family Victorian house purchased in 1951 for the elderly and illiterate Marceline Gillis to live in while caring for her alcoholic husband and disabled veteran son. She assumes she will be the property's new landlady, fulfilling her lifelong dream of homeownership and ending a life of abject poverty only to discover that her two sons and their wives, who are the real owners, have another ideas, feeling she is ill-equipped for the job. This sets off a small war within the tightly-knit Catholic immigrant family from Nova Scotia, Canada, where Marceline has always been the tightfisted controlling matriarch of the entire Gillis family--up till now."  

STORY SUMMARY:  Until 1951, Marceline Gillis's life had been anything but joyful. A French Canadian woman in her early sixties, she's already survived the Depression, a world war, and caring for seven kids while nearly being abandoned by her alcoholic husband early in their marriage. Her bitter heart has blamed her unemployed alcoholic husband, Fred, for her unhappiness, only to be then stuck caring for her adult son, Tommy, who returns from the war with a permanent brain injury. After the war ended, Marceline's son, Andrew, insisted on pooling their resources to buy a house for Marceline where she could finally rest and be free of financial burdens. Weeks before the family moves into the house, Andrew suffers a sudden heart attack and dies -- an ongoing infliction with the Gillis men-- leaving the final house purchase to his two brothers, Johnny and Bernie, who live elsewhere with their wives. Marceline is now a tenant in the house owned and managed by her two sons, leaving her deeply upset about losing control over her family and the new house. Despite all these daily changes and family tragedies, every chapter is full of humorous family moments as Marceline schemes her way toward her goal of reclaiming control and ownership over her entire family.    

After hearing the legal term 'intent of ownership' from a real estate lawyer, Marceline realizes she can eventually gain ownership of the house by managing its day-to-day operations while 'acting' as the true landlady. After Marceline begins to make progress in her landlady goals, she suffers another tragic blow: the death of her husband Fred Gillis, which sends her into a two-year-long stopper, unable to cope with the loss of her husband after forty-two years of marriage. It takes the death of her second son, Tommy, to finally snap her back into her usual self-serving nature, during which time she starts to see visions of her dead husband, Fred, in the house on Maple Avenue. The young Fred (as he appears the exact age of their wedding day) warns his wife of her selfish ways, which have him and his two dead sons worried that she won't make it to where they are if she doesn't change her ways soon. 

Soon, Marceline dismisses these 'visions,' unable to admit to her mistakes, only to suffer another blow, the death of her third son, Bernie. Only this death, however, puts her goal of complete ownership of the house finally within her reach. She soon gets her final fourth son, Johnny, to agree to sign over half of the property to his mother, which eventually means she legally owns part of the house. Now, only Bernie's widow, Corinne, stands in the way of ultimate ownership. But her strong daughter-in-law Corinne refuses to let Bernie's half go to her selfish mother-in-law, fearing that somehow the house will end up not remaining in the family, which had always been the wish of her dead husband, Bernie, as stated in his final will. The stress over the house then causes the death of her fourth and final son, Johnny, leaving Marceline finally in complete possession of the house after threatening to take Corinne to court. Corinne can't win with the house going to her mother-in-law, causing a falling out between what remains of her family, including the widows of her two dead sons and grandchildren, who were thought to one day own the house.   

After suffering a fall, Marceline finds she is alone and can no longer manage the house alone. After a second fall, she is forced to sell it and move to Florida to be cared for by her middle daughter, Gertie, who takes the money from the sale of the house and invests it, making Marceline a wealthy woman. Over the following decade, Marceline suffers the loss of her three remaining children, her three daughters, Gertie, Anna Mae, and Lena, leaving her without any family, as she had always predicted due to the 'bad' Gillis hearts. Now living alone in an upscale nursing home in Orlando, Florida, Fred continues to visit his wife, forcing her to finally make amends for her selfish ways, including leaving her wealth to her son's descendants up north. On her ninety-fifth birthday, Marceline is visited by her dead son Andrew, who was responsible for promising her that the entire house was hers before its purchase. As Andrew confesses his mistake in making a promise, he feels responsible for her being in the nursing home alone, without any family left to take care of her, knowing she could have remained up north in the house, being looked after by Bernie and Johnny's kids and wives instead, had he not made the promise to her, thinking that was the only way to make her happy in life, after seeing how miserable she was with her life up till that point. Marceline tries to pretend she no longer cares about the house when her dead son disappears, leaving her upset and alone again, realizing how much she has lost. 

In the final scene on her death bed, Fred appears to his wife, Marceline, after which she finally confesses to all her mistakes, hoping for the family's forgiveness. As Fred admits to his own failures, a wave of forgiveness washes over the couple, transporting them back to the house on Maple Avenue, which they both dearly loved. There on the back porch, on the familiar old glider bench overlooking the backyard and neighborhood, the couple, now in their youth, finally get to enjoy the house the way they always could have -- had it not been for their 'unforgiving hearts ' and wasted lives.