O'Hehir, Diana 1929- (Diana F. O'Hehir)

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O'Hehir, Diana 1929- (Diana F. O'Hehir)

PERSONAL:

Born 1929; married Brendan O'Hehir (an educator; deceased); partner of Mel Fiske (a writer); children: two sons. Education: Johns Hopkins University, Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Bel Tiburon, CA. Agent—Ellen Levine, Trident Media Group, LLC, 41 Madison Ave., 36th Fl., New York, NY 10010. E-mail—[email protected]; [email protected].

CAREER:

Novelist, poet, and educator. Mills College, Oakland, CA, taught creative writing for more than thirty-four years.

WRITINGS:

POETRY

Summoned: Poems, University of Missouri Press (Columbia, MO), 1976.

The Power to Change Geography, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1979.

Home Free, Atheneum (New York, NY), 1988.

(Editor, with Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar) Mothersongs: Poems for, by, and about Mothers, Norton (New York, NY), 1995.

Spells for Not Dying Again: Poems, Eastern Washington University Press (Cheney, WA), 1996.

NOVELS

I Wish This War Were Over, Atheneum (New York, NY), 1984.

The Bride Who Ran Away, Atheneum (New York, NY), 1988.

CRIME NOVELS

Murder Never Forgets, Berkley Prime Crime (New York, NY), 2005.

Erased from Memory, Berkley Prime Crime (New York, NY), 2006.

Dark Aura, Berkley Prime Crime (New York, NY), 2007.

Sound recordings include Diana O'Hehir Reads "The Old Lady under the Freeway," "Period Piece," "Bedside," "The Prayer Meeting at the Nursing Home" (poems), and "I Wish This War Were Over" (excerpts), American Audio Prose Library (Columbia, MO), 1990.

SIDELIGHTS:

Diana O'Hehir was already established as a poet when she wrote her debut novel, I Wish This War Were Over, which was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Anne Tyler, who reviewed the book in the New Republic, wrote that O'Hehir "has managed in her first novel to produce a group of characters so complex and particular, so appealing and so heartbreaking, that what happens to them matters far less than who they are. Like real-life people, they draw us into the layers of their personalities, and these form the book's real plot."

The story is set in 1944, and World War II is not yet over. O'Hehir reveals wartime life through the eyes of nineteen-year-old Helen, who is on a cross-country quest to save her forty-three-year-old alcoholic mother from herself. In spite of her grandmother's warnings that Helen is but a child and her mother a grown woman who cannot be helped, Helen travels by train to Washington, D.C., and along the way meets O'Connell, one of her mother's former boyfriends. O'Connell, a union activist twice Helen's age, calls her "Butchie" and invites her to stop with him in Reno. As they approach that city, he entertains her as they play poker by inventing other players, including a stripper, and playing their hands. As Tyler wrote: "Wartime Washington, a Virginia mill town, the bizarre, bleak waiting room of an Army doctor, the crumbling little apartment in which, after Helen's mother goes on a doughnut-frying spree, droplets of grease hang from all the shade pulls—each scene is palpable, meticulously described. And all are deepened by a faultless sense of time. The year 1944 lies over them like a translucent wash of color."

O'Hehir is editor with Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar of Mothersongs: Poems for, by, and about Mothers, an anthology of two hundred poems called "razor-edged" by a Publishers Weekly contributor. The reviewer wrote that the collection "illuminates so many angles of its subject that the overall effect is dazzling."

In Spells for Not Dying Again: Poems O'Hehir's focus is her relationship with her now-deceased first husband, Brendan O'Hehir, a James Joyce scholar who taught at the University of California at Berkeley. In spite of the volatility of that relationship, the poet grieves for Brendan, as reflected in the poems she considers "spells." Brendan is the central figure, much as Ani is the central figure of the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Upon his death, Ani's body was mummified, to be preserved so that his ba (soul), xu (intelligence), and ka (genius) might revisit it and live on in unison in the deity Osiris. Brendan's body was cremated and returned to Ireland, where his son scattered his ashes from a cliff. He lives on in the poems of O'Hehir, whose book is a tribute, an offering of forgiveness, and a reaffirmation of life after death.

O'Hehir turned to mystery fiction with her novel Murder Never Forgets, which follows twenty-something Carla Day as she heads off to see her father, Edward, who is living in an elder-care facility and deteriorating rapidly. When she arrives, Carla discovers that there is more than old age behind her father's increasing dementia, and she sets out to discover the truth. O'Hehir again includes details of Egyptian history in her writing, making Carla's father an Egyptologist. Jennifer Monahan Winberry, writing for the Mystery Reader Web site, remarked: "The mystery is well hidden among the Egyptology lore and Edward's fading in and out of reality, though there are enough clues to lead the reader in the right direction." Erased from Memory, O'Hehir's follow-up novel, continues Carla's adventures, this time coming to the rescue when her father is suspected of murder. A reviewer for Publishers Weekly praised the work for having "a well-crafted plot and an engaging cast of characters." In Kirkus Reviews, a critic found that "Carla's second caper sparkles with sharp wit and moves nicely."

In Dark Aura, O'Hehir continues her series of crime novels featuring Deputy Sheriff/nursing home administrator Carla Day and her father, Alzheimer sufferer and Egyptologist Dr. Edward Day. When Carla is called to investigate the death of a young girl named Tamina Kerry in the town of Stanton's Mill, California, she learns the child was an indigo, one of the individuals that local hippies believe to have a purple-toned aura that signifies great depths of wisdom. Tamina was known in the community to be a gifted girl, so when she called them together to tell them something vital, they all complied with her wishes. However, the meeting location was near the edge of a cliff, and before she was able to convey her announcement, Tamina fell over the ledge to her death. Carla must determine if the girl's death was truly an accident or something more, and if her death could be linked to the disappearance of a number of indigo children from the community, one of whom was Carla's daughter. In a review for Booklist, Barbara Bibel praised the book for its combination of "alternative lifestyles, Egyptian lore, and a glimpse of life in a senior community, blended with an intricate plot." A reviewer for Publishers Weekly commented that "Carla's filial care-giving balances the West Coast occultism and lends this whodunit emotional heft."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, November 15, 2007, Barbara Bibel, review of Dark Aura, p. 20.

Kirkus Reviews, July 15, 2005, review of Murder Never Forgets, p. 769; October 1, 2006, review of Erased from Memory, p. 992.

New Republic, March 19, 1984, Anne Tyler, review of I Wish This War Were Over, p. 36.

Publishers Weekly, March 27, 1995, review of Mothersongs: Poems for, by, and about Mothers, p. 79; September 25, 2006, review of Erased from Memory, p. 47; October 8, 2007, review of Dark Aura, p. 39.