A Literary Journey Through Midlife, Madrid, and the Art of Choosing to Be Other

HOUSTON - July 6, 2025 - PRLog -- In her debut essay and story collection, Jayne Marshall explores how life journeys us, whether we want it to or not, and what we do with those unexpected and sometimes startling pivots.

Marshall's essays trace the physical and emotional journeying of a woman who moves from the UK to Madrid in midlife, seeking reinvention, adventure and meaning. Against the backdrop of the sensuous Spanish capital and following the soft hum of commuter trains, the book maps the city through themes of love, the body, leave-taking, and choosing to be other. With poetic precision and disarming honesty, the essays explore how places and events etch themselves into our identity – and how meaning is often found not in an endpoint, but in the act of moving through.

Early readers describe the book as an "intimate travelogue of self."

Anna Beer, author of Eve Bites Back and Death of an Englishman says, "An excoriatingly, triumphantly, honest new voice."

Excerpt: "One headstone - my favorite - has a misspelled epitaph. It reads: In Lovin Memori, the orthographical errors a reminder that the woman beneath died far from those that shared her native tongue. I wonder if foreignness is more, or less, keenly felt in a place like this."

A Line Drawn or Printed: Six Routes Through Madrid is on sale beginning June 17, 2025.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jayne Marshall is from the UK but lives in Madrid, Spain. She is an editor and a fiction writer and essayist. Her work has been published in magazines and anthologies around the world, including as a nominee for the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award (UK). She holds the Master's in Creative Writing, with distinction, from the University of Oxford. She also writes a regular column for The Madrid Review.

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

Modern Odyssey Books publishes literary fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, short story collections, and other narrative forms. In addition, Modern Odyssey produces the literature-inspired In Search of… puzzle book series. For more information, visit www.modernodysseybooks.com.

MEDIA CONTACT INFORMATION

For interviews, covers, author photographs and/or other inquiries, please contact Maria Glymph at maria@modernodysseybooks.com or +41 79 634 22 26 or +1 281-895-3201.