The Sun, the Moon, The Stars

by Carolyn Marie Mamchur

The Sun, the Moon, the Stars is the archetypal journey of two heroines, one shining with the light of innocence; the other clouded by veil of darkness. Maria and Theresa, twins separated at birth, present the complexity of the hero’s journey and though they move through passages that most would consider terrible, their stories are essentially images of hope and sweetness, for the girls are, themselves, vulnerable and loving in the most essential way and despite all they do and all that happens to them, we are always on their side.

The Sun, Maria’s journey, is told as a trilogy beginning with an adolescent Marie who must wrestle with the double-edged sword of newly discovered magical powers. What follows this is the pivotal point of her journey is the story of her isolated childhood next door to a whorehouse which provides clues to the mystery of the unique adolescent. This trilogy ends with the story of the teen-age bride who finds love as confusing and as complex as magic.

The Moon, Theresa’s journey, also a trilogy, begins with the adolescent thrown into a foster family where she discovers her own powers of allurement, also double-edged, throwing the new family into treacherous turmoil ending in murder. Part two reveals the childhood which gave birth to this tumultuous personality; part three ends in a love affair, too consuming, too sweet, too tragic for Theresa’s young constitution to survive.

The Stars, the final trilogy brings Marie and Theresa into womanhood, Theresa struggling to make sense of life and love in a 70s reform school for girls; Marie recovering from the loss of her son by creating a garden and discovering it is inhabited by ghosts. The story concludes with the women living together in renegade harmony, fighting governments and race horse owners’ associations and bandits in their quest to protect the most noble of the beasts of burden, the horse.

The Sun: Maria Kat: A Trilogy

Crow Girl: Maria Kat, given the gift of magic powers from a grandmother, has to grow up fast when she discovers the dark side of answered prayers: the death of a nun, brain-damage for her vicious step-brother, and her beloved Tom, the milk-man’s horse, being sent to the glue factory. She vows never to use the powers again. Such promises are not that easily kept.

The Chocolate Bar: Maria’s seven-year-old fixation on getting chocolate seems simple enough. Until you realize it is really a desperate search for a father who pretends to be ‘lost’ in a war which ended 3 years ago. The girl’s need to belong has her willing to do almost anything to become a member of the Forsay gang, eleven boys and one frail girl, children of the woman who runs a whore house next door to where Marie lives with her mother and her dying grandfather in a makeshift rented house shaped like the letter, ‘L’.

The Prairie Bride: When Maria, at 15, escapes the unbearable complication of a step-father bent on bedding her by setting up shop as a dress-maker, she could scarcely have imagined that by 16 she would be a wife and mother forced to live in an old motel on the outskirts of Regina, Saskatchewan with a gorgeous but unemployed husband whom she may not love.

The Moon: Saint Theresa: A Trilogy

19th Street: Theresa, forced at 11 to live with strangers after the loss of her beloved adopted mother, Minnie Jones, has a bit of an anger management problem. A curious mixture of desperate vulnerability and eerie willfulness, she seduces her foster father, only to save him by bashing in the landlady’s head with a garden shovel. Things backfire when he takes the rap in a who can save whom ending that breaks the heart.

Hotel Gladstone: Theresa, a three year old, goes to live at the Hotel Gladstone under the watchful eye of the eccentric Minnie Jones, who owns the hotel, and her gentle nephew, a hunchback who becomes Theresa’s best friend. But even they cannot protect Theresa from the bigotry and greed of small town mentality in the 40s.

Young Love: Finally, it is Theresa’s turn for a little joy and it comes in the form of a tender love affair, fairy tale sweet until a pregnancy results in a self-performed abortion that leaves Theresa sterile and hurls the young lovers into two separate worlds of drugs and madness.

The Stars: Sisterhood: A Trilogy

Addicted: A young adult Theresa moves from being an addict to helping addicts as a teacher therapist in a girl’s reform school. Theresa is a natural and forms real bonds with the girls. Until…. one of the girls escapes to Theresa’s house and makes out with the bank-robbing boyfriend Theresa met in rehab and who has been hiding in her basement.

The Ghostwriter: Marie, Will, her 15 year old son, her mother, Rose and step father, Roy, are on their way to escaping the city to live in an ideal country cottage. On the way, a semi smashes into them, killing Will and Roy. The women face life alone in the country until Marie begins to be visited by ghosts. The most significant ghost, Mikey, does his best to protect his fey mother and alcoholic grandmother, even in death.

Free Rain: Marie and Theresa find peace and challenge in Marie’s ranch where they care for abused and abandoned horses. The two women, unaware that they are fraternal twins separated at birth, mistake their intense attraction for lesbian love. Failing in the sex department, they refocus their energies and take on the racing world, initiating a law that forces owners to put aside “social security” for race horses.