THE WORLD OF PONDSIDE

Set in a nursing home, a resident is found drowned, strapped to his wheelchair headfirst in the pond. Is it suicide or is it murder?

As much as the nursing home is rocked by the death of one of their own many are even more distressed that they can no longer log onto their favorite video game, World of Pondside, designed especially for them by the man whose body is now submerged in water. As residents, nurses, kitchen help, and police all search for the truth about what happened to Robert they are sucked into a journey that will lead them across the world (both physically and virtually.) The story is filled with a raucous bunch of misfits who suffer from various stages of dementia and other age related afflictions which Mary Helen handles with humor and compassion. "World of Pondside" is a "Chinatown"-style mystery (where the real story keeps getting bigger than it first appeared to be) that's a cross between "One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest" (but in a nursing home) and "Ready Player One". Mary Helen Stefaniak is the author of two earlier novels, THE TURK AND MY MOTHER (which received the 2005 John Gardner Fiction Book Award) and THE CAILIFFS OF BAGHDAD, GEORGIA (which was selected by independent booksellers as an Indie-Next "Great Read and received the 2011 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Fiction) and a collection of short stories, SELF-STORAGE AND OTHER STORIES.