Character from
Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City series. Mary Ann is from
Cleveland (which she uses as an apology for not knowing anything). She comes to
San Francisco and at first stays with her old schoolfriend Connie, a ditzy air stewardess. Connie's bad taste drives her nuts, so she moves into a room in 28 Barbary Lane,
Anna Madrigal's house, and becomes friendly with
Michael 'Mouse' Tolliver,
Mona Ramsey and
Brian Hawkins. She gets a job as a secretary at Halcyon Communications, a firm run by Edgar Halcyon, and has an abortive affair with his son-in-law Beauchamp (who later turns out to be gay). Later she goes on a cruise with Mouse and meets Burke Andrew, a reporter who's lost his memory, and they have some rather gruesome adventures tracking down a cult. By the next book she's working in TV as a minor presenter, going out with Brian, and seriously in love. She ends up breaking the story of
DeDe Halcyon Day, who's just come back from a gay Cuban refugee camp after escaping from the
Jim Jones massacre in Guyana.
She later marries Brian, adopts her schoolfriend Connie's baby after Connie dies, and becomes more famous, eventually getting her own TV show. In the last book she divorces Brian and moves to New York to do national syndicated TV.
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