Jo-Ann Mapson

So, right away these three hurting souls cross paths. You know some kind of relationships are going to develop. You know they'll have to deal with a crisis (or crises) separately or with each other. You may even have an idea how things will turn out in the end. But Mapson paints such vivid pictures of these three suffering characters that you don't worry about all that - you just ache with them; root for them; get exasperated with them, and celebrate with them. There are sections which I show more couldn't read and turn the pages fast enough to satisfy the need to know, and sections where I just wanted to let the words slide over me. Beautiful language, rich characters, gorgeous setting with lots of history - Mapson has created a gem in a small, deceptively simple package.

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There was no other tree like it in California, yet estimates suggested the tree was 200 years old. Here, Glory took in dogs from the shelter and trained them for new homes. Here she and her husband, Dan, had taken in foster sons. Here Dan had built a chapel. Now, Dan is gone, and Glory is left alone until the day the pirates had a wedding in her chapel. On that day, the social worker, Caroline, brings her a lonely teenage girl, Juniper. The wedding seems to be going smoothly, until a sword show more fight brings an ex-cop onto the scene, and Glory asks him to take photographs. All three - Glory, Juniper, and Joseph - have been battling their demons, and slowly begin to form relationships with each other.

I haven't read this sort of fiction in awhile, but it has all the elements I loved in stories as a teenager - especially a foster child and grieving characters. There are no easy answers for any of them, but they each have to deal with tragedy in their own way and decide if and how to move on. As their relationships grow and more of their back stories are revealed, I grew to care very much about what happened to the Glory, Juniper and Joseph. Though it may seem at first glance to be a run-of-the-mill contemporary fiction, questions about loss and closure and what God thinks of human tragedy (if he exists) give you food for thought. show less

Four generations of women work hard to support themselves with their small café, while giving to the community in their northern California town.

I got caught up in the family dynamic fairly quickly. Bess Moon (known as Gammy) is the matriarch, who really needs to step away and rest. She’s been solely responsible for her daughter (and granddaughter) since her husband died early in their marriage. Alice / Allegra is Gammy’s free-spirited “hippie” daughter who ran off for a “summer show more of love” when she was barely sixteen, coming home pregnant and raising her child, Mariah, as best she could with Gammy’s help. Mariah managed to get her master’s and land a teaching position at the local college, though she, too, got pregnant while she was a teenager. Her daughter, Lindsay, is a genius attending an expensive private school and interested in science.

As happens in real life, things get messy. Major illness, loss of a job, bullying and strained budgets are stressing all the Moon women. Not to mention a couple of men added to the mix.

Secrets will come out. Fights will be had. Tears will be shed. At the end, I’m certain the Moon women will find a way to deal with whatever life throws at them. show less

Not my favorite Mapson novel, but anything she writes is better than most Women's Fiction. The first half of the book is slow but if you are patient the seemingly inconsequential details come together in the last memorable 50 pages, in which so much happens that you wish she would slow down the narrative a little. Calls out for a sequel, although Finding Casey is itself a sequel to the much superior Solomon's Oak.