Fiction. MARCEL MALONE is a beautiful first novel that intersperses prose and poetry in the furtherance of a touching and engaging story of two lost souls whose exploration of the meaning and structure of words and memories brings unexpected confrontations and consequences. It is a captivating odyssey of personal transformation through the experience and love of poetry.Psychologist Vera Lewis, troubled by her own hidden despair, prescribes a radical treatment for her patient, Marcel. Depressed by constant rejection, Marcel finds a source of comfort in writing poetry. While Vera succeeds in desensitizing Marcel to rejection, she becomes personally drawn to the unfamiliar world of poetry. Vera is able, through her growing knowledge and use of poetry, to uncover for Marcel the source of his difficulties. As Marcel moves on with his life, Vera's domestic problems worsen. Her newfound exploration and writing of poetry become her means of resolving the secrets of her past and visualizing for herself a better future. Her psychological descent and eventual emergence into a new life are strangely similar to the path taken by her former patient, Marcel.