OCEAN CITY — Author Marie Benedict took the audience along on a trip down a rabbit hole during the annual Author’s Luncheon on Oct. 6 at The Flanders Hotel.
Sponsored by the Ocean City Free Public Library and the Friends & Volunteers of the OCFPL, the Author’s Luncheon features a different writer each year speaking about his or her books, inspiration, writing process and more.
The guest author this year was Benedict, New York Times and USA Today best-selling author of historical fiction novels that shine light on the role of women.
Library Director Karen Mahar introduced Benedict to the audience, a boisterous group of 326 mostly women spread throughout the second-floor ballroom of the century-old hotel.
Marie Benedict is a pseudonym for Heather Marie Benedict Terrell, who has published nearly 20 books starting with young adult and fantasy and evolving into historical fiction. She now prefers to be known as Marie Benedict.
A Pittsburgh, Pa., native, she studied history and art history at Boston College, graduating magna cum laude in 1990. She then attended Boston University School of Law, graduating cum laude.
After working as a lawyer for 10 years in New York City and publishing her first novel “The Chrysalis” in 2007, she left her job as a litigator and began to write full time, publishing seven novels by 2014, including “The Map Thief,” “Fallen Angel,” “Brigid of Kildare,” “Eternity,” “Relic,” “Chronicle” and “Boundary.”
Starting in 2016 with the publication of “The Other Einstein,” she began writing under the pseudonym of Marie Benedict, spotlighting women who were overshadowed by the men in their lives.
She has become an author on a mission to combine her love for history and admiration for women’s accomplishments and achievements.
Her mission is to “excavate from the past the most important, complex and fascinating women of history and bring them into the light of present day where we can finally perceive the breadth of their contributions as well as the insights they bring to modern-day issues.”
Benedict chooses her subjects based on two criteria — women who left a legacy and who have something intriguing about their lives.
Her books are historical fiction told from a first-person perspective and based on facts and research about the women’s lives. The books delve into and attempt to tell the women’s stories through their eyes, using the backdrop of their historical times, circumstances and challenges.
Benedict lives in Pittsburgh with her husband, Jim Terrell, and sons Jack and Ben.
Her book “The Only Woman in the Room” was used by the OC Reads program held virtually in 2020.
Other books published as Benedict are “Lady Clementine,” “The Mystery of Mrs. Christie,” “The Personal Librarian,” “Carnegie’s Maid,” “Lady Churchill” and “Her Hidden Genius.”
Her next book, “The Mitford Affair,” is expected in January 2023.
Benedict spoke for more than an hour.
“If you know me and know my work, you know I love libraries,” she said, joking that Ocean City is the first community where she has spoken that has a roller coaster. “I am so indebted myself for what they did to make us feel connected and engaged to the world around us during the pandemic. That’s a debt that can never be repaid in my book.”
Benedict said she was a voracious reader and, as the oldest of six children, found it as her only escape. She was fortunate to have an aunt who was an English professor and poet whose “task was to keep me in books.”
She said her aunt chose books focusing on the mysteries of the past with a different perspective. The one book that put her on the path to becoming an author was “The Mists of Avalon” by Marion Zimmer Bradley — a groundbreaking, female-centric telling of the Arthurian legend told from the perspective of Queen Guinevere and Morgan le Fay instead of Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table.
“It was an epiphany for me. It opened up my eyes to the fact that so many voices in history have stories that are not being told,” Benedict said. “I started to wonder how history is being told and I started to wonder, ‘Where were the women?’”
She said she followed the path “down the rabbit hole” and has been returning there again and again to find women whose accomplishments were dismissed, overshadowed or outright stolen by men in their lives.
“When we think about women from the past, we think they are much different than us but the reality is they often grappled with many of the same issues we deal in our own lives today and we can learn so much from them,” Benedict said.
Event chairwoman Debbie Moreland said 345 people signed up to attend, a positive response for the first one since 2019 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“This is one of our largest that we have ever had,” Moreland said.
Prior to the pandemic, they hosted author Lisa Wingate and heard complaints that many could not get tickets.
“We ended up expanding that and it was successful, so we felt we could accommodate, with the help of The Flanders of course, that many people. We’re probably close to that but this was under much more harmonious conditions,” Moreland said.
She was very pleased with the turnout.
“It’s absolutely so refreshing and so rewarding to know that, No. 1, we can get back to some sort of normalcy, but there is just this community support coming out,” Moreland said.
By CRAIG D. SCHENCK/Sentinel staff