Westbrook writer Kathy Eliscu will celebrate the release of her first novel, “Not Even Dark Chocolate Can Fix This Mess,” Saturday in Portland.

The book follows a middle-aged woman, “Tink” Casawill, during a midlife crisis of sorts. According to Eliscu’s description, the protagonist is struggling with family and work demands, a love life, and she “gets roped into doing a good deed, which turns disastrous.”

“It’s a fun and funny novel aimed at giving a whole lot of very tired women some laughs,” she said Tuesday. “I think men who like to laugh will enjoy it, too.”

Her book launch celebration is Saturday, May 9, from 11 a.m.-2 p.m., at the Northgate Shopping Center Starbucks, on 91 Auburn St. in Portland.

A former nurse, Eliscu has been writing columns and articles for regional publications, including two for Current Publishing, for years. In 2012, her “Lightly Roasted” column in Maine Women Magazine won a National Society of Newspaper Columnists Humor award.

She intended to keep the laughs rolling with the 313-page “Not Even Dark Chocolate Can Fix This Mess,” published by Maine Authors Publishing.

While a work of fiction, Eliscu said the basis of the story came from some real-life events, and the characters are “bits and pieces” of real people.

“The story itself is a huge ‘what if?’” she said.

When asked what the inspiration for the novel was, Eliscu said, “The experience of being sandwiched between aging parents, wild hormones of ‘peri menopause,’ a late-in-life relationship, the amazing complexity of our institutional health-care system, raising growing/grown kids, and the desire to please.”

Eliscu was born in New York, but spent summers in Maine. She moved here in 1973. While working as a nurse, she raised a family. Her mother, Marge Eliscu, wrote a long-running humor column called “Coffee Break” for the Maine Sunday Telegram, and Eliscu occasionally filled in as a guest columnist.

Eliscu said she technically began work on the novel even before she retired from nursing. She said it was an on-again, off-again project, with many of the ideas stemming from her time in a hospital.

“Actually, I think it was when I was still using a sharpened stone on the walls of my cave. That’s how long ago it was,” she said Tuesday.

Kathy Eliscu, a Westbrook author, will release her new novel this weekend. Known for her humor, Eliscu’s “Not Even Dark Chocolate Can Fix This Mess” is promising more laughs. Courtesy photoNew novel