Solomon's Oak
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
''In Solomon's Oak, we see how some things - like massive oaks, and unshakeable love - can stand the test of time. I love the way Jo-Ann Mapson writes about family - how the roots we put down are the ones that ultimately hold us together' Jodi Picoult
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Solomon's Oak is the story of three people who have suffered losses that changed their lives forever. To make ends meet, Glory Solomon, a young widow, is using the chapel her husband built on their central California farm, under a 200-year-old white oak tree, as a place to hold unusual weddings. Her first is for a bride and groom who want a pirate wedding.
Fourteen-year-old Juniper McGuire is the surviving member of a family decimated by a local kidnapping. Juniper arrives on Glory's doorstep, pierced, tattooed, angry and homeless. When Glory's husband Dan was alive they took in foster children and raised them. But Juniper may be more than she has the capacity to handle.
Joseph Vigil is a former Albuquerque police officer and crime lab photographer who was shot during an assignment. Now disabled and in constant pain, he came to California to photograph the giant trees of the state.
Jo-Ann Mapson's deeply felt, wise and warm portrayal of broken souls finding their way back to humanity shows how these three people - along with a host of dogs, horses and goats -enter and transform each other's lives.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Mapson s (Hank Chloe) latest is an emotionally genuine if predictable story of three lonely, damaged people who find solace in one another. A year after the untimely death of her husband, Dan, Glory Solomon is adrift, in financial trouble, and unable to find much meaning in a world without her mate. But when she opens a wedding chapel on her historic California ranch (known for its ancient oak tree), she attracts a variety of couples in search of unconventional nuptials and two lost souls. Juniper McGuire, an angry teenage girl, is still reeling from the tragedy that put her into the foster care system. And a former crime scene photographer, Joseph Vigil, suffers chronic pain from an on-the-job accident. Together, the three grievers form a tentative support system that could if they ll let it be called love. As in her previous novels, Mapson seems most at ease describing the relationship between human and animal especially dogs and horses and in rendering the Western landscape. Her facility with dialogue, however, is less impressive, but most readers will be too involved in the sweep of loss and recovery to stumble for long over awkward talk.
