August 6, 2010
Deacon John and Mary Grace McMullen
Evansville couple shares their Catholic faith, a love of writing
Deacon John and Mary Grace (Bernardin) McMullen sit behind a display of the books they have written. They say they help one another with their characters and plot development. They will be at book signings in Evansville on Aug. 14 and Aug. 28. (Message photo by Mary Ann Hughes) Click for a larger version.
By MARY ANN HUGHES (Message staff writer)
Sometimes you just know. That’s what Deacon John and Mary Grace McMullen say about the night they met.
They say the bonds that connected them that evening were their Catholic faith and their mutual love of writing. Their faith has grown over the years, and so has their passion for writing.
They are both published authors. His specialty is historical fiction; hers is what she calls “chick literature with a Christian bent.”
John is from Vincennes. He grew up a parishioner at the Old Cathedral, a parish founded in 1732, which served as the cathedral for the Diocese of Vincennes. He attended Rivet High School, Vincennes University and then St. Meinrad.
For the last 20 years he’s been a member of the theology department at Mater Dei High School in Evansville. On Aug. 15, 2009, he was ordained to the diaconate, and he now serves at Nativity Church and as the chaplain at the Evansville State Hospital.
Mary Grace (Bernardin) McMullen grew up on the eastside of Evansville. After she graduated from Mount St. Joseph College in Cincinnati with a degree in communications and religious studies she worked as a caseworker for Catholic Charities.
They met at a Bible study. It was an ecumenical faith-sharing group, and after the meeting they went out for coffee.
Mary Grace remembers, “We had a lot in common.”
John adds, “We talked about writing and traveling and our faith.”
They talked into the early morning hours, and “felt like we knew each other all our lives,” she said. They were married in 1992, and today they are the parents of two sons.
Mary Grace says that she always had a desire to write. “It was my dream to do that.”
John says writing “helped me create order out of the chaos.”
His first novel was “Roman,” a book about a missionary priest, Father Roman Weinzapfel, who was falsely accused of raping a parishioner in the early nineteenth century.
A companion book, “The Last Blackrobe,” is the story of French attorney-turned missionary priest, Benjamin Petit. Under the urging of Bishop Simon Bruté, he joined the northern Indiana Pottawatomie tribes in 1837, a year before their forced removal west. The priest traveled with the tribes, and today his chalice can be found in the Bruté Library in Vincennes.
Both novels examine the anti-immigrant sentiment in southern Indiana in the nineteenth century, and look at how the Catholic faith was spreading across the Midwest at the time.
His book, “Poor Souls,” offers an account of American Catholic parish life through the eyes of seminarian Martin Flanagan. John said he wrote it “in part” because of the priest abuse scandal.
Mary Grace’s novel “Odd Numbers” is set in a southern Indiana river town and is the story of three people, “a man and two women. The women are in love with the same man.”
She says it is a “redemption story about friendship, relationships and people’s faith journeys,” and that she knew what the title would be long before she wrote the last sentence.
“While it’s not autobiographical in content, it is autobiographical in feeling.”
While John and Mary Grace share the title “writer” they have very different styles of writing.
Maybe because he grew up in historic Vincennes, his books are peppered with historic references about Vincennes and other towns in southern Indiana during the nineteenth century.
When he is working on a book, he fills their entire dining room table with his research books and papers. “John is more disciplined than I am,” Mary Grace says of their writing processes.
She works 10 to 15 hours a week at a computer tucked away in a small guest room in their home.
“I always had different ideas floating around in my head,” she said, adding that she writes “because I need to. If I go too long without writing, I’m miserable.” She is now working on a second novel, one with the same river town setting and even a few of the same characters from her first book.
They both smile as they recall characters in their novels, and say they share ideas about the characters and plot development as they are writing. “We talk about problems with the books, and help each other out. It’s a big part of our marriage.”
The McMullens will be doing two book signings in August. On Aug. 14 they will be at Barnes and Noble bookstore from 2 to 4 p.m., and on August 28 they will sign books at Borders from 1 to 3 p.m. Both bookstores are in Evansville.