76. Solomon's Oak - Jo-Ann Mapson

2010, Bloomsbury
TPPL
371 pgs.
For: adults
Rating: 4

I remember my friend, Carol, talking about Jo-Ann Mapson, so when I was this sitting on the "New Books" shelf at the library, I decided to try it. Thanks, Carol!

I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the setting, which is in the farmlands east of Monterey, California. I enjoyed the characters, although I couldn't quite get into the protagonists head, although Mapson tried really hard. I am not an animal lover and this is a book about animal lovers....horses, goats, and dogs, particularly. However, I didn't mind it at all, and enjoyed learning bout the different personalities of each.

Three people with emotional wounds are brought together. The protagonist, a farm woman who lost her dearly beloved husband of 20-or-so years unexpectedly the previous year, a New Mexican crime lab photographer that has been injured in a shootout and must learn to live with intense pain - physically and emotionally - for the rest of his life, and a teenage girl with a huge chip on her shoulder and even more loss. Her sister disappeared four years before, and that led to her mother's death and her father's abandonment. Whoa!

The story is well told, though almost repetitious in places. However, it went fast and was entertaining and made me think....deeply. The widow, Glory Solomon, is coping with money problems and begins a small business holding weddings and the reception at the chapel her husband had built, and in their barn. The cop, Joseph Vigil, is making a photographic studies of trees, and the teenager, Juniper McGuire, complete with multiple piercings and even a tattoo, is quickly put to work helping with catering the weddings and lots of farm chores.

These people, and people like them, are everywhere. Out there. In our world. Trying to live with the heartbreak and anxiety and unfairness of life. Parts of each of them are in many of us. It doesn't hurt to be reminded of this once in awhile.