THREE HUSBANDS AND A LOVER

Maitland: Mill City Press, 2017. First edition. Hardcover. A nearly new copy in a fine jacket. Signed by the author on the front blank. Mary Louise Ott's wedding was everything she'd always dreamt it would be, except for a few details. As she prepared to marry her true love, she wasn't hearing wedding bells; instead, family members sang their version of the song "Take Me Out To The Ballgame": "And it's one, two, three strikes you're out, in the oold marriage game." You see, this was Ott's third time to the altar; it was also the third for her husband, Gary Howarth. The musical talent was their three kids -- a daughter, 7, and son, 14, from her side; and a son, 12, from his. It was 1996 in Northeast Portland, one month after the couple's previous divorces were finalized. Ott and Howarth would immediately deal with hostile ex-spouses; in addition, both parents had to learn how to relate to their stepchildren, a rough prospect at times. Ott learned to pick her battles. "If it really mattered to me, I was going to say something; if it didn't, I wasn't," she says. "Blended families have the same issues as all families, just more so." Ott's stepson, "Gary II," had divided loyalties caused by the acrimonious relationship between his father and mother. "Definitely the most difficult thing to deal with is ex-spouses, the dynamics of those relationships and how they affected our kids," Ott says. 179 pages illustrated from color photographs.