Charting her own course
Published 7:01 am Sunday, March 2, 2014

Photo by Karl Beighley
P.S. Duffy was born abroad, grew up on the East Coast, spent summers in Nova Scotia, nearly attended law school and has spent several decades working in speech pathology and communication, but she’s slated to come to Austin in April as the Minnesota author selected by the Page Turners’ for the 2014 citywide read.
In March, many local book clubs will read Duffy’s first novel, “The Cartographer of No Man’s Land,” ahead of the April 3 Page Turners event.
Duffy is excited — and surprised — to be selected as the author for the Austin Page Turners’ 2014 citywide read, which will cap off with Duffy coming to town for a presentation at Austin High School around 10:40 a.m. and a 7 p.m. presentation at Austin Public Library, with a reception beginning at 6:30 p.m.
“I was absolutely thrilled,” Duffy said. “What an honor.”
From the East Coast to Rochester
For Duffy, the path to becoming a Minnesota author is anything but direct. In fact, many may think it’s unique for a writer in her 60s with an extensive background in the sciences to publish her first novel. But to Duffy, it’s always been about stories.
Duffy said she grew up in a family of storytellers in New England and lived in Washington, D.C., for 17 years before moving to Minnesota in 1987 to earn her doctorate from the University of Minnesota.
“The Cartographer of No Man’s Land” has roots in Duffy’s childhood. Her family owned a summer house in Nova Scotia, where Duffy spent many summers sailing. From the first time she visited, Duffy said she felt like she’d been there before. She also remembers feeling completely at ease sailing.
“I thought, ‘I’m going to write a story about this someday,’” she said.
She earned an undergraduate degree in history from Concordia University in Montreal, and she worked at George Washington Hospital in Washington, D.C., in the 1970s while she was applying to law school.
Her job was to find the real names of John and Jane Does that came into the hospital, and she’d then find out if could they afford to stay at the hospital.
But through this experience, Duffy became interested in communication.
“These people couldn’t tell me their stories; I had to fill in, and that’s what drew me to science,” she said.
Duffy remembers one story of a man who’d been injured after recently coming to America and spoke little English. He’d been mugged, injured, had surgery and could only use gestures to communicate. It turned out, he was trying to express that he was concerned about a girl. Duffy found the girl, and the two would later meet.
Duffy was accepted to law school, but never attended. Instead, the job inspired her to instead seek a career working speech pathology and communication disorders.
After more than 25 years in the field, Duffy is a writer in the neurological sciences for the Mayo Clinic in Rochester. She works with labs studying neurologically-based conditions, like head injuries, stroke, Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Parkinson’s and how they affect speech and language. In writing for labs, Duffy doesn’t water down the information for the general public, as it’s intended for experts in the field.
Duffy has extensive writing experience. Along with publishing short fiction, she also published a memoir, “A Stockbridge Homecoming,” in 2001 under the name Penelope S. Duffy. The memoir focuses on her family’s time in central China, where Duffy was born in the 1940s. She also wrote “Right Hemisphere Damage, Disorders of Cognition and Communication,” a text book published under the last name Myers.
Her jump from the sciences to fiction may surprise many, but it’s natural to Duffy.
“It seems very weird on the one hand that I’m bridging these two worlds, but for me they’re highly connected,” she said. “It’s all about stories and communicating.”
Regardless of the writing, precision — especially selecting the right words and rhythm — is key for Duffy. In the sciences, she has to be more literal, while fiction is more imaginative.
“You’re hoping to give just enough to the reader to stimulate their imagination,” she said. “And I think that’s the biggest difference: You want the reader to bring their own experience and their own imagination to what they’re reading.”
To Duffy, the two different writing forms proved a beneficial blend. If she’d hit a roadblock in her fiction, she could focus energy on the more straight-forward science writing. When the sciences became tedious, she could focus on her fiction.
“I really felt that writing one fed the other,” she said.
“The Cartographer of No Man’s Land”
Duffy’s first novel, “The Cartographer of No Man’s Land,” is set during World War I, both on the Western Front and in a Nova Scotian fishing village. The book centers on both Agnus MacGrath and his 13-year-old-son, Simon Peter. Agnus leaves Nova Scotia for the Western Front in search of his missing brother-in-law. Having been raised a pacifist, he thinks he can find work as a cartographer, but he instead is enlisted in the infantry. The book transitions between Agnus and Simon Peter, who is at home with the family.
Though set during World War I, Duffy didn’t set out to write a war novel. She was more interested to write about a father and son’s relationship and about how people adapt with moral challenges.
“It’s really a story about surviving … a shifting landscape of war and its effects, and it’s really about forgiveness and healing broken bonds,” she said.
However, Duffy returned to her roots studying history by spending several years researching the war. The more she researched the war, the more she knew it was the proper setting for her characters.
Duffy learned much in her research, and she noted she’d like to talk to AHS students about the war. She noted Americans often skip from the Civil War to World War II and overlook World War I, as the American Revolution, the Civil War and World War II tend to define the U.S. as a country.
“I think as Americans, we were in it a very brief time,” she said of the First World War. “Everyone else was in it for four years.”
Duffy has considered writing a sequel or another book with some of the characters from “The Cartographer of No Man’s Land,” but she hasn’t started working on anything yet.
Life in Rochester
Though Duffy grew up on the East Coast and her husband, Joe, is from New Jersey, the two have no plans of moving after they retire.
“We just think of ourselves as Minnesotans,” she said. “We will not be moving.”
Joe also works for Mayo and was head of speech pathology. The couple has two children, Matt and Melanie, and four grandchildren ages 6 to 11 — two from each child. When she’s not working at Mayo or writing, Duffy enjoys attending her grandson’s basketball games, reading and going for walks with her West Highland terrier on the trails in Rochester. She’s also active in Calvary Episcopal Church in Rochester.
Duffy is an avid reader, and her favorite authors include Ian McEwan, Jane Gardam, and she loved the book “Olive Kitteridge” by Elizabeth Stout.
Duffy is excited to come to Austin in April and described the PageTurners annual event and citywide read as a great way to promote reading, while also bringing the community together.
“I am really thrilled about this Austin program,” she said. “I think it’s going to be fun; it’s just a terrific event.”
“The Cartographer of No Man’s Land”
•Available at the Austin Public Library, at Philomathian Religious Books, 309 Main St. N., at the Riverland Community College library and online.
For more, check out www.austinpageturners.org