Welcome!

Welcome to The Book of Mev web site!

Thanks to the labors of my friend Andrew Wimmer, this web site is now open to receive your comments and reflections on the book, as well as allow you to see what other people have thought and written. I’ve joined the sangha of bloggers, too, and will write occasionally on themes and issues related to The Book of Mev, about my late wife Mev, who was born in 1963 and died in 1996 from a brain tumor.

The Book of Mev is about more than one amazing person. It is also about Palestine and Sebastião Salgado and liberation theology and the murdered Salvadoran Jesuits and Jack Kerouac and waking up and William Blake and beloved companions burning children and bearing witness and faith (broken), hope (tried) & love (tested) and the poet/prophet Sheri Hostetler and the Angels of Arco Avenue and the Gospel according to the State Department and the Gospel according to Ann Manganaro and Karen Catholic Worker House and about 117 other topics drawn from real life!

I spent years, on and off, working on this book, trying to convey what it was like to know and love this person: her drive, smile, commitment, playfulness, joie de vivre, weaknesses, travels, and photos. I sorted through notebooks, letters, and post cards; talked to various friends and family members; started sketching short chapters; and read voraciously, till I had the “Aha!” experience—this was the fall of 2000, triggered by the reading of Eduardo Galeano and Reinaldo Arenas—and finally realized the structure of this memoir-scrapbook-biography.

Then, once I got going, I couldn’t help myself: It’s got interviews, testimonies, poems, photographs, snapshots, lists, a litany, reminiscences, tales of heartbreak, and visions of courage. And so, it’s a mega-book, a self-proclaimed pasticcio, a mishmash of memory, a Joycean “Here comes everybody,” a mode of therapy, a political critique of these times, a commonplace book in a book, a soundtrack manqué, and more.

I hope there may be something in The Book of Mev that speaks to you and your own path and highest aspirations. Please leave your comments, reflections, and questions! If you are ever in Saint Louis and want to visit, contact me! I’m at MarkJChmiel@aol.com. We’ll meet at La Dolce Via, at the corner of Arco and Taylor in Forest Park Southeast.