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    Finding Casey: A Novel
    Finding Casey: A Novel
    Finding Casey: A Novel
    Ebook341 pages4 hours

    Finding Casey: A Novel

    By Jo-Ann Mapson

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Glory Vigil, newly married, unexpectedly pregnant at forty-one, is nesting in the home she and her husband, Joseph, have just moved to in Santa Fe, a house that unbeknownst to them is rumored to have a resident ghost. Their adopted daughter, Juniper, is home from college for Thanksgiving and in love for the very first time, quickly learning how a relationship changes everything. But Juniper has a tiny arrow lodged in her heart, a leftover shard from the day eight years earlier when her sister, Casey, disappeared-in a time before she'd ever met Glory and Joseph. When a fieldwork course takes Juniper to a pueblo only a few hours away, she finds herself right back in the past she thought she'd finally buried.

    A love story, a family story, a story of searching and the bond between sisters, Finding Casey is a testament to human resilience. This completely stand-alone novel, featuring beloved characters from Solomon's Oak, will charm Mapson's readers and move her into a larger sphere.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury USA
    Release dateOct 2, 2012
    ISBN9781608199242
    Finding Casey: A Novel
    Author

    Jo-Ann Mapson

    Jo-Ann Mapson, a third generation Californian, grew up in Fullerton as a middle child with four siblings. She dropped out of college to marry, but later finished a creative writing degree at California State University, Long Beach. Following her son's birth in 1978, Mapson worked an assortment of odd jobs teaching horseback riding, cleaning houses, typing resumes, and working retail. After earning a graduate degree from Vermont College's low residency program, she taught at Orange Coast College for six years before turning to full-time writing in 1996. Mapson is the author of the acclaimed novels Shadow Ranch, Blue Rodeo, Hank Chloe, and Loving Chloe."The land is as much a character as the people," Mapson has said. Whether writing about the stark beauty of a California canyon or the poverty of an Arizona reservation, Mapson's landscapes are imbued with life. Setting her fiction in the Southwest, Mapson writes about a region that she knows well; after growing up in California and living for a time in Arizona and New Mexico, Mapson lives today in Cosa Mesa, California. She attributes her focus on setting to the influence of Wallace Stegner.Like many of her characters, Mapson has ridden horses since she was a child. She owns a 35-year-old Appaloosa and has said that she learned about writing from learning to jump her horse, Tonto. "I realized," she said, "that the same thing that had been wrong with my riding was the same thing that had been wrong with my writing. In riding there is a term called `the moment of suspension,' when you're over the fence, just hanging in the air. I had to give myself up to it, let go, trust the motion. Once I got that right, everything fell into place."

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    Reviews for Finding Casey

    3.5/5

    35 ratings5 reviews

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    • 3/5
      An enjoyable read. Jo-Ann Mapson infuses this book, set in Santa Fe, New Mexico with southwest culture. At first I found the constant use of Spanish words distracting since an explanation of the word had to follow each usage, but once the rhythm of the story took over it began to feel more authentic. The main story centers around a woman, her husband and their adoptive daughter. The story opens from the perspective of a ghost who resides in the new home they are about to purchase, which was an interesting introduction to the story. Plenty of foreshadowing early on in the story also helped keep my interest. I was a little thrown when the story jumped forward in time so quickly and felt that we hadn't fully established the characters when clues were being dropped about troubles and sorrows in their past- I didn't quite care yet enough about these people to be curious about their problems. I really started to enjoy the story when it started flipping back and forth between several characters. At first it was in an effort to understand how these people were linked. I will say the ending was rather obvious, but the author allowed you to invest in these characters' happiness and want good things to happen for all of them. All in all, this was a sweet book and I would definitely recommend it as a heartwarming read about family love
    • 2/5
      I read this because a reviewer on All Things Considered recommended it. Wasn't very well written, but stupid me, I am reading the antecedent anyway, because I like to know the whole story.
    • 4/5
      I was charmed by the descriptions of New Mexico. Juniper was adopted by the Vigils after her parents deaths and her sister disappeared. I enjoyed the vigil family. They are the type of people who are willing to go the extra mile to help people. They are also the type of type who are willing to make room for one or live by the more the merrier.
    • 4/5
      Finding Casey covers a lot ot territory with a down-home, western, contemporary tone. Glory Vigil at 42 has a new husband, an adopted 19 year old daughter with a history, and is hugely and unexpectedly pregnant. Add a parallel plot of an abducted and abused young woman, and don't be surprised when everything is resolved neatly in the end. Well written
    • 4/5
      I hadn’t realised that Finding Casey is a continuation of a story begun in Mapson’s Solomon’s Oak, which introduces the characters of Glory, Joseph and Juniper, not that it matters as this novel works well as a stand alone.Set in Sante Fe, Glory and her new husband Joseph Vigil, a police officer retired on disability, have not long settled into a new home they share with a ghost nicknamed Dolores, and their adopted daughter, Juniper, when she is home from college in Albuquerque. When Glory discovers she is pregnant at 41 she is stunned yet excited, even with the persistent morning sickness and concerns about carrying a baby to term at her age.Juniper is excited to be welcoming a baby brother or sister to their family but she can’t help but be reminded of her younger sister, Casey, who was abducted as a young child and never found. Juniper refuses to dwell on the long ago tragedy though instead focuses on the challenges of college and her budding relationship with the handsome but feckless Topher.As Glory nests, Joseph considers a career change and Juniper experiences the joy and heartbreak of first love, a young woman named Laurel defies her isolated religious community to seek medical help for her seriously ill daughter, Aspen. As Laurel sits by her child’s bedside willing her to recover from the coma she has slipped into, she reflects on her history with Seth and the Farm while trying to avoid the probing questions of the hospital’s social worker and staff.The connection between Laurel and the Vigil family soon becomes apparent but it is a remarkable, if unlikely, twist of fate that brings them together. Not that I minded much, even with the predictability of the plot and uneven pacing, because I had come to care about the characters and wanted the best for each of them.Finding Casey is a charming story of family, love and redemption.

    Book preview

    Finding Casey - Jo-Ann Mapson

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