Owen's Daughter

May 12, 2014
This moving 12th novel from Mapson (Finding Casey) explores the importance of fresh starts among a group of people in New Mexico, some of them familiar from Mapson’s previous novels. Sara Kay “Skye” Elliot leaves a rehab clinic, which she’d entered to deal with her alcohol and drug problem, to find that her rodeo rider husband, Rocky—a fellow addict—and four-year-old daughter, Gracie, have vanished. Instead, she is met by her father, Owen, who arrives on horseback, leading alongside him Skye’s beloved horse, Lightning. Determined to make amends for abandoning Skye when she was 12, Owen helps her search for Gracie. In the process, they reconnect with Owen’s true love, painter Margaret Yearwood. She has her own problems, including death, multiple sclerosis, and painful family secrets. Mapson delves deeply into the messy, complex relationships between these people, while rendering the New Mexico landscape so beautifully that it emerges as an additional member of the cast. She has a particularly strong feel for human-animal bonds, creating four-legged (and in one unfortunate case, three-legged) characters that are as distinctive as the human variety. Agent: Deborah Schneider, Gelfman Schneider Agency.

February 15, 2014

Mapson, popular for novels like Blue Rodeo, Solomon's Oak, and Finding Casey, mixes characters from all three in her latest, not a sequel to any of them but a work that stands on its own. After Skye Elliot gets out of rehab, she searches for daughter Gracie, now in the custody of her ex-husband, even as recovering alcoholic Owen Garret searches for a painter named Margaret he once loved.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2014

Mapson performs certain kinds of literary acrobatics with this stand-alone novel. Winding together characters from Solomon's Oak (2010), Finding Casey (2012), and one of her very earliest, Blue Rodeo (1994), she takes her readers on a journey of rediscovery. Like riding through a hometown neighborhood, familiarity calls memories to mind even as characters have grown and changed over the years. Our eponymous heroine is Skye Elliot, fresh from rehab and desperately trying to locate her four-year-old daughter and regain custody. Her first step is finding a ride out of rehab. Margaret Yearwood is struggling to come to terms with a diagnosis of MS when her son Peter appears with plenty of his own troubles and the same rage he exhibited as a teenager. The intersection of lives and families is revelatory and a catalyst for hope and healing. VERDICT Longtime fans of Mapson will be delighted to see their favorite characters meet; readers of Jodi Picoult and Anita Shreve would be well rewarded. Mapson does an incredible job of bringing together beloved characters from past novels without leaving newcomers in the cold. [See Prepub Alert, 1/28/14.]--Julie Kane, Sweet Briar Coll. Lib., VA

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.