Mandeville woman trades law partnership for writing career

When Mandeville resident Pamela Binnings Ewen retired from a career as a corporate lawyer to write full time, it must have seemed like a natural progression.

Her family boasts no fewer than six successful authors. Among them are the Edgar award-winning James Lee Burke of the Detective Robicheaux series, screenwriter Andre Dubus, whose story, “Killings,” was developed into the Oscar-nominated film, “In the Bedroom,” and his son, Andre Dubus III, author of “The House of Sand and Fog,” which was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1999.

Five of the six authors, including Ewen, had new books released this summer.

“I guess it’s in the genes,” she said with a laugh. “I don’t think any of us set out to make writing the family business.”

Ewen, a self-described “Louisiana girl,” grew up in Sulphur, just outside Lake Charles. She lived in New Orleans for 17 years before moving to Houston in the 1970s, where she spent more than two decades practicing corporate law. She eventually became a partner in the international firm Baker Botts L.L.P, representing large corporations wanting to recapitalize assets or finance new construction.

The work was rewarding, she said, and less adversarial than trial law.

“You work with a team to help a company make something good happen,” said Ewen. “It was a wonderful career for a woman.”

She was still practicing law when she started writing her first book, “Faith on Trial,” a nonfiction work in which the reader is invited to examine evidence for the death and resurrection of Jesus. Ewen presents archaeological, scientific, historical, literary and even medical data in her analysis of the four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

An agnostic at the time, Ewen had set out to find answers to her own questions of faith. Her initial intention was not to publish her findings, only to apply the legal process to the story of the birth of Christianity. The resulting amount of information was so vast, however, and its effect on her so profound, she decided to turn it into a book.

Although written for non-lawyers, it has been used as a text on law and religion at Yale Law School and praised by numerous reviewers, including former Secretary of State James A. Baker III and the Catholic Free Press.

Ewen next turned to novels. Her most recent, “The Moon in the Mango Tree,” began as nonfiction and was based on the diaries kept by her grandmother, an opera singer turned missionary’s wife in 1920s Siam, now known as Thailand.

“I was too close to it, and the writing was flat,” she said. “I felt I hadn’t done justice to my grandmother’s story, so I put it aside and wrote something else.”

The interim book, “Walk Back the Cat,” is a suspense novel that ties together characters from the time of Christ to the present day in a tale of a corrupt clergyman.

The project helped Ewen develop her craft, and she returned to her grandmother, a suffragette who was torn between her desire for a musical career and love for her husband.

The era was a “fascinating” time for women, said Ewen. Although the 19th Amendment earned women the right to vote in 1920, they still weren’t allowed to own property or serve on juries.

“It’s like there was a crack in the door, but it wasn’t really wide open,” she said.

Ewen continues to mine personal history for inspiration. Her next book, tentatively titled “Dancing on Glass,” is about a young female lawyer in New Orleans.

She expects the book to be published sometime next fall, and while her work is often found in the Spirituality or Christian Fiction section of most bookstores, she doesn’t necessarily categorize herself that way.

“I think my books just happen to have Christianity as an underlying theme,” she said. “A good book really just has good ideas that are universal, that make people think about something they might not have thought about otherwise.”

Ewen’s books can be purchased locally at Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million and Simple Goodness in Mandeville, or online at www.amazon.com.

For more information on the author, visit her Web site at www.pamelabinningsewen.com.