Michelle Dooley Mahon is hoping to publish her memoir in October with the help of a crowdfunding initiative. Pic: Jim Campbell

WEXFORD WRITER Michelle Dooley Mahon is appealing to the public of Wexford and beyond to get behind her Fund-it campaign in order to have her debut novel ‘Scourged’ published.

The book is a memoir of Michelle’s life and that of her mother who sadly passed away this year after living with Alzheimer’s for a decade.

Beginning in the 1960s, the tandem narrative unravels the memories of life in a small Irish town, narrated by the Scourge of the title Michelle, and her mother Siobhán in a series of flashbacks.

The book is comprised of sections of black comedy, nostalgia, memories and epiphanies that document the personalities, history, and archive of an ordinary family who, through the disease which Michelle calls ‘death by a thousand cuts’ become cathartic, redemptive, and ultimately uplifting, as they become extraordinary in their ability to cope.

It also shines a light on an illness that is rarely discussed in this detail.

Written over four years, ‘Scourged’ takes the reader on a journey from early diagnosis, to the stages as the patient declines, the family’s implosion, the morphing of the Scourge from wide-eyed child into enfant terrible then through obese depressed recluse, morphing into the creator of the Shellshock one-woman shows .

The title is a reference to one of the kinder names Michelle was called as a child, and also to the scourging of a family by a disease that knows no bounds, feels no pity, and shows no mercy.

Anyone that pledges to fund the project will receive a signed copy of the book which will be launched in October.

To donate, log onto http://fundit.ie/project/scourged—a-memoir or donations can be made in person to Michelle.