Nine Letters to a Dead Man (Nine Letters to a Dead Man)

Marléne (pronounced Mar Lay Na) Ochs was born in March in 1955 and spent her childhood traveling as an 'airforce' brat because her father was in the military. She continued to live abroad in Turkey, Greece and Cyprus when she married artist, Peter Paul Ochs.

The French side of her family, the Levasseur, arrived from Paris, France in 1630. Today there are over 3,000 family members who have their own family newsletter published quarterly. Note: the Levasseur member who landed in North America was named Pierre de Vigareaux, Peter the Vigorous, because he had fathered nineteen children.

The first person she made cry with her short stories was her grade 7 teacher, Mrs. Grace Taylor, who was a pretty tough survivor of the Second World War in Great Britain. Mrs. Taylor liked to throw chalk at 'chatterboxes' but on the day she chose to read a story about 'being alone with the stars in the sky' she began to weep. The self-conscious and she Marléne shrunk in embarrassment when she realized it was her story.

She has been writing ever since. As editor of the high school newspaper, as college journalism student, as television reporter and producer and as private consultant and occasional lecturer for Seattle Community College and University of Washington.

She got married in 1990 when she and Peter knew he was dying of leukemia. Nine years later she wrote a book about surviving grief and hopes to pass on her insights and revelations to a hungry audience.