From an early age, I was intuitively empathetic. I was able to see and hear things that resonated with my being in a truly literal sense.

There were the questions of: How do people belong? How do people treat each other? How are people in pain? I moved to see how I could help“fix” people.

I hold my ground, and I take credit for the things
I do well, and if that’s ego, so be it.

Those are the two sides of Maria Pappas. Not like Jekyll and Hyde, but perfectly integrated in a fluid and florid life. This is what readers will encounter in the unique memoir of Maria Pappas.

She is Robin Hood, Eleanor Roosevelt, Paula Bunyan, and a fungible force of nature, but also a free spirit sporting spiked hair and six-inch heels, who does headstands on a dare, and works out like a fiend two hours a day. She rubs shoulders with the homeless and trades bon mots with the glitterati, takes counsel with monks, and punches it out with politicos. These two sides of her being throw her life into more twists and turns than a Marvel movie. 

Maria Pappas cleaned up the cesspool that was the Cook County Treasurer’s Office. For that alone, she deserves a Nobel Prize. Her accomplishments are endless.

But this is the important thing about her: she fixes the world in real time with real results. For example, using her financial acumen to discover ways for thousands of black and brown homeowners to recover millions of dollars owed to them.

This memoir is important for several reasons. It gives voice to an independent woman who refuses to be small and bullied. Maria Pappas is Betty Friedan’s vision of a fully liberated woman. Maria Pappas is also the purveyor of diversity.

She interacts with practically every being in the hierarchy of being, as the ample photo gallery in the memoir attests. She is also the poster child of an active, mature adult lifestyle led with vibrancy and verve.

Finally, Maria Pappas is more than an inspiring role model of surviving a childhood on the edge of oblivion in West Virginia: she teaches the world to heal the past so that in the present we can be the best versions of ourselves.

Maria the Pappas Memoir 
Eckhartz Press, 2026
Maria Pappas with Mark Eleveld
ISBN: 978-1-971660-08-0
Review by Dr. George David Miller