Mental: A Novel

Mental (2023) is Marie K. Johnston’s prequel to Home (2025). Here we meet Evelyn Marie Stuart, Eve, a beautiful, sensitive, intelligent young teacher who must make peace with her childhood traumas in order to live her adult life. Set in multiple Texas cities in the 1990s, Mental is a study told journalistically, but in the vein of magic realism, where Eve and her identical twin sister both write to understand what is ailing Eve and hope she will be set free,

Though at times this novel can be dark, it is a tale of the overwhelming power of the human spirit to triumph over adversity and for the soul to emerge intact from trauma even if deep scars have formed. This novel is about changes and transitions in a world that can be full of evil, betrayal and pain. Eve Stuart is a testament that the innocence in all of us can help us overcome some of the worst experiences life has to offer. Full of Johnston’s poetry and wit, Mental is a novel that can inspire you to be your best self no matter what has happened in your past.

Written in Johnston’s style of prose-poetry, Mental is “faction”: fiction based on her life. It contains lyrical and rhyming poetry, describes Spring, Austin and Galveston, TX, is full of realistic, down-home characters and scenes which paint a tale of a girl on the verge of adulthood who refuses to shut down emotionally in order to transform into a woman who knows where she’s going because she knows where she’s been.