With unflagging enthusiasm, Sharon Mallon signs books and shares personal moments with the steady stream of people visiting the St. Paul Co-op last Friday, waiting to get their copies of The Gift of Adultery signed. Despite the years that have gone by since she has made her home in the area, the retired broadcaster and now author recognizes many of her fans by name, and shares warm conversations and reminisces with each one.
As they leave, the readers express excitement, with one overheard to remark, “I can’t wait to get home and read this.”
For Mallon, this book signing is a homecoming, as she was born and raised in St. Brides, and attended school in St. Paul, which is where she was also bit by the radio bug.
A teacher at her school taught radio, and when she walked into the radio booth, the realization hit her that she was where she belonged. “I just knew this is what I wanted to do.”
She began her career working in town at what was then called OK Radio, when, in 1979, she started doing stories on an 83-year-old missing woman in Elk Point. Olga Grosseth was found four days later in the woods, having survived on berries and “in better shape than her rescuers,” Mallon recalls with a chuckle. In another stroke of good luck, her news coverage had caught the attention of CFCW, where she ended up landing a job.
“I was just very, very lucky,” she says.
For the next few decades, Mallon had it all: a successful radio career and a happy marriage with a man who told her every day he loved her, a relationship that was the envy of their friends. They were planning their future retirement and trips with happiness, so the revelation that he had been having an affair for nine months came as a totally unsuspected shock.
“I couldn’t put two words together,” she said. She went from living the dream “to someone who was a shell of herself in two or three days,” with her confidence plummeting to zero.
She took some time off, a painful time where she recalled she would cry for days and days, with the searing visions of her husband’s infidelity in her mind. As she tried to put the pieces of her life together, she started talking about her pain on social media.
“The response was so overwhelming,” she said. “People would say, ‘God, you’re so transparent – it’s helping me.’”
Her listeners and followers encouraged her to write a book, and while the idea seemed far-fetched at first, Mallon slowly began to consider it.
After retiring last year, she sat down to work at it, writing the entire 12 chapter book in just two weeks, with an editor she was introduced to encouraging her and editing the content.
“I was on the air for 35 years and I only talked about the good stuff – it didn’t seem right not to talk about the bad stuff,” she said. “I wanted to be the one to share the humps and bumps of life, because we all have them.”
The book details her recovery and steps to reclaiming her life after the devastation of her husband’s adultery. She self-published the book earlier this year, and was amazed as 1,000 copies were sold within a couple of months, with St. Paul’s Dollar Store seeing the biggest sales for the book.
Louise Carpenter, who owns the Dollar Store with her husband, said people were keen to buy the book and see Mallon first-hand at a book signing.
“They’ve been very anxious,” she said, expressing gladness that after some schedule madness, Mallon was able to come out to St. Paul last week.
As for Mallon, the support she has had has seen her regain her confidence and optimism.