Introduction

Solomon's Oak is the story of three people who have suffered losses that changed their lives forever.

Glory Solomon, a young widow, holds tight to her memories while she struggles to hold on to her Central California farm. She makes ends meet by hosting weddings in the chapel her husband had built under their two-hundred-year-old white oak tree, known locally as Solomon's Oak. Fourteen-year-old Juniper McGuire is the lone survivor of a family decimated by her sister's disappearance. She arrives on Glory's doorstep, pierced, tattooed, angry, and homeless. When Glory's husband Dan was alive, they took in foster children, but Juniper may be more than she can handle alone. Joseph Vigil is a former Albuquerque police officer and crime lab photographer who was shot during a meth lab bust that took the life of his best friend. Now disabled and in constant pain, he arrives in California to fulfill his dream of photographing the state's giant trees, including Solomon's Oak.

In Jo-Ann Mapson's deeply felt, wise, and gritty novel, these three broken souls will find in each other an unexpected comfort, the bond of friendship, and a second chance to see the miracles of everyday life.

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Excerpt

Prologue

In 1898, in Jolon, California, not far from the Mission San Antonio de Padua, Pennsylvanian Michael Halloran set out to cross the Nacimiento River before spring thaw. Like everyone heading west, he thought California was the land of plenty: The Pacific Ocean full of abalone, citrus groves and artichokes growing year round, everything necessary to raise a family and prosper.

According to Salinan Indian storytellers, his horses refused to enter the water until Halloran whipped them. On the other side of the river lay his newly purchased land. Everyone begged him to wait until spring runoff was complete. Stay in the hotel for free, the owner said. Halloran refused, believing it was a trick to steal his land. As soon as he entered the river in his horse-drawn wagon, his wife Alice and baby daughter Clara aboard, he lost control. Michael Halloran was thrown free, but Alice became caught in the reins as the panicked horses tried to free themselves. The wagon flipped over and over in the swift current. Horrified, Michael could only watch from the riverbank while the reins he had punished the horses with twisted and turned, decapitating his wife. Her body washed ashore days later. Baby Clare was never found.

After Mrs. Halloran’s burial, the Salinan shaman predicted her ghost would never rest, because a body without all its parts has trouble finding its way to the spirit world. In the 1950’s, Alice appeared to two soldiers on watch at an ammunition bunker on the Fort Hunter-Liggett military base. One died of a heart attack; the other never recovered from the trauma. The army denied the reports, but closed the bunker. In addition to the Salinan story, “The Headless Lady of Jolon,” several Central Valley California ghost stories feature a headless horsewoman: “The Lady in Lace,” “Guardian Spirit,” and “Ghost of a Murdered Wife.”

Story, passed down from generation to generation, can take two forks: factual history, or legend/lore. The word “history” came to English from Latin via Greek, and originally meant “finding out,” and in some dictionaries, “wise man.” In modern dictionaries, history is defined as “a continuous, typically chronological record of important events.” You can make history, and that can be a good or bad thing. Sometimes people say and the rest is history, which leaves out the most interesting parts. Or you can be history, which means you’re gone. Disappeared. “Dust in the wind,” which is the title of the rock band Kansas’s only hit song.

The word “legend” has its roots in Middle English, French, and Latin. Legenda translates to “things to be learned.” “Lore,” from the German and Dutch “lehre,” translates to “learn.”

You would think that between the two we’d get the whole story.

To this day, it is said that on a moonless night in Jolon headless Alice can be seen floating above the Nacimiento River, searching for her lost daughter. She also frequents the old cemetery on the military base. Locals say if you catch sight of Alice, quickly put your ear to the earth and you will hear the baby girl crying for her mother.

Part 1

Glory Solomon

A Pirate Handfasting

Menu:

Roast tom turkey

Apple, date, and onion stuffing

Yukon gold mashed potatoes

Peasant bread

Crudités

McIntosh apples

California navel oranges

Mead

Grog

Lemon bumble

Pirate ship devil’s food wedding cake

Thanksgiving, Thursday, November 27, 2003

Chapter 1.

One year ago to the day, Glory Solomon had spent hours cooking the traditional Thanksgiving dinner for her husband Dan: turkey with breadcrumb stuffing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes and gravy, and Dan’s favorite, the yam casserole with the miniature marshmallow topping she always managed to scorch. Why he liked it she never understood. Her pumpkin pie was a work of art, with a homemade crust so flaky it rivaled her grandmother’s, but for Dan it didn’t get any better than blackened yams. Glory had set the table with the china Dan’s mother had left them, Franciscan Desert Rose. She ironed and folded linen napkins. She whipped heavy cream to tall peaks. While Dan said grace she took a slug of wine because religion made her nervous. They feasted and laughed, and when they could move again, they took the horses out for a long ride on their oak-filled property that was ten minutes as the crow flies from the Mission San Antonio de Padua. After that, Glory called her mother in Salinas to wish her a happy holiday and they both said how much they missed Daddy, gone twenty-two years now. Glory and her sister Halle had been teenagers when he died. Next Glory called Halle and interrupted her apple-tini party because she could never get her schedule right.

This year Glory was roasting three twenty-five pound turkeys, mashing thirty pounds of potatoes, baking a dozen loaves of baguette bread, and heaping local apples and oranges in bushel baskets borrowed from her friend Lorna who ran the Butterfly Creek General Store. Not a yam in sight. If Dan were still alive, Glory would gladly have made yams the main course, paid attention to his grace, put her wineglass down, and waited for him to say, “Amen.”

This Thanksgiving, she made gallons of mead (honey wine), lemon bumble (vodka, heavy on the lemons, to prevent scurvy), and grog, which is basically a bucket of rum with fruit thrown in. These three beverages are what pirates drink, and drink is what pirates do, on any occasion, and who can blame them, the high seas being filled with mortal danger every single second?

The dinner she was cooking was for the Thanksgiving “hand-fasting” ceremony of Captain General Angus McMahan and his wench-to-be, Admiral Karen Brown. Those two and their fifty-eight guests were weekend re-enactment pirates who’d been turned away by every church they tried to book for their ceremony. Angus had come to Glory seeking permission to hold the wedding in the chapel Dan had built on their land last September. What would Dan have thought of her holding a wedding there? What was Glory thinking that she could cater and pull off a wedding on a national holiday?

Money.

Angus had spotted the chapel while visiting the tree known as Solomon’s Oak. It wasn’t in the AAA guidebook, but word gets around when a white oak that isn’t supposed to exist in the Central Coast Valley climate grows to be more than a hundred feet tall. The tree had stood there for three generations of the Solomon family, and who knew how long before that?

The oak set the Solomon’s property apart from the other ranchers, who grew strawberries, grapes, pecan trees, distilled flavored vinegar, raised hens, or ran a few head of cattle, made gourmet goat cheese to sell at Farmer’s Market—whatever they could do to squeak by and keep hold of their land. Arborists bused field trips to the tree. Horticulture professors from U.C. Santa Cruz gave lectures beneath its branches. Young men seeking a romantic setting to propose to their girlfriends could not go wrong under the shady oak. In sunny weather, plein air painters descended with field easels. If the moon was full or there was some pagan holiday, say Bridgid or Beltane, a flock of druids would show up, sometimes in clothing, other times without. The Solomons tolerated people on their property because they recognized the tree was special. Most oak trees die before they hit a hundred years of age, but Solomon’s Oak had a healthy bole the circumference of which, according to the University of California Santa Cruz boys, estimated its age at approximately two hundred and forty years old.

“No one else will host our wedding,” Captain Angus said as he pled his case to Glory a month earlier over the fancy coffee and almond croissants he’d brought to win her over. October, once Glory’s favorite month, had been filled with golden leaves and a pile of unpaid bills. “We’ve tried the Unitarian church, the Transcendentalists, the non-denominational; I’ve even been turned down by the Masonic Temple, and those guys have a reputation for being somewhat piratical, at least in how they dress for parades.”

Glory studied him as he sat across from her at her kitchen table. “How old are you?” she asked.

“Thirty,” he said. “It’s a turning point. How old are you?”

“Thirty-eight.”

“How long were you married?”

“Nearly twenty years.”

“Wow,” Angus said. “That’s a long time.”

“You’d be surprised how fast it goes by,” Glory said, brushing crumbs from her fingers.

“I’m in love, Mrs. Solomon.”

“I can see that.”

Angus had a red beard and strawberry blond hair that fell to the middle of his back. His eyes reminded her of a kid’s, sky blue and hopeful. “And I want our wedding to not just be a legal contract, but wicked, good fun.”

Glory hadn’t set foot into the chapel since Dan died. As far as she was concerned, the building could fall to rubble. Every time she went out to feed the horses she turned her back on it. Where someone else might have seen beauty in Dan’s carpentry and the river rock, all she saw was precious time wasted on faith that failed to save him. Since his death from pneumonia last February she’d been forced to take a part-time job at a chain discount store. Four days a week she drove the freeway to work five-hour shifts for minimum wage. Her supervisor, Larry O., was nineteen and had atrocious grammar. He was authorized to tell her how to stack the merchandise, how to speak to customers, and when she could duck out to the restroom. She was old enough to be his mother.

Dan’s life insurance policy, through Horsemen’s Practical, a California carrier just about every rancher and farmer in the area subscribed to, paid out fifty thousand dollars upon his death, which seemed like a fortune while the Solomon’s were paying the premiums. But they had no health insurance and hospital bills had gobbled up much of it. By Christmas her savings would be gone.

The pirates wanted to pay Glory three thousand dollars to use the chapel and to make their reception food. She had chickens, horses, goats, and dogs to feed.

“Okay, Angus. Consider your wedding on.”

“Thank you! I can’t wait to call the Admiral!” He jumped up from the table and thanked her in the nicest way possible—he took out his checkbook.

Over her rickety kitchen table among the crumbs of coffeehouse pastry, an unlikely business was born:

Solomon’s Oak Wedding Chapel.

Pirates welcome.

*

The chapel had been Dan’s final project. One summer morning over his oatmeal he’d said, “I’ve got a bug to build myself a chapel. Nothing fancy, just a place to worship out of the rain.”

Glory wasn’t a believer, but she supported his efforts, bringing him lunch and admiring his carpentry, the work he’d done all his life. He’d finished the chapel just before Labor Day 2002, and darned if they didn’t have rain that very weekend. The small building could seat forty on the hewn benches, fifty if you held a child on your lap. It had a pitched, slate roof, exposed beams, and stained glass windows designed by an artist Dan traded for finish carpentry on her Craftsman-style house in Paso Robles.

Four months later he would be dead.

Behind the last pew where Glory now stood checking decorations, she’d often brought her husband ham sandwiches and lemonade for lunch. When the summer sun beat down, Dan could drink an entire pitcher of lemonade. He’d take a sip, smack his lips and say, “I am the luckiest man on the planet.”

Glory thought he still was, because he saw the good in everyone he met. He just wasn’t on the planet anymore.

*

Just two days before Angus’s pirate wedding, Glory stood in her bedroom closet, staring at her husband’s shirts. So far as she knew, there was no etiquette/timetable regarding boxing up your late husband’s clothes, but the day seemed as good a time as any. In a little over three months, February twenty-eighth, she would have lived an entire year without Dan. She had folded his blue jeans and flannel shirts into a cardboard box. His neckties, given to him by their foster sons over the years, she kept. Maybe this winter she’d use them to piece a log cabin quilt. His lined denim jacket would keep someone else warm. His Red Wing boots were practically new. She wrapped them in newspaper and set them on the closet floor. Soon all that remained was his starched white shirt. She pressed it to her mouth, inhaling Irish Spring soap.

“I sure could use your help right now,” she whispered. “I have no idea what I’m doing. What if someone loses an eye in the sword fight?”

Once a day she allowed herself ten minutes of closet time. The idea was to restrict her tears to that private place in the house. After she wiped her eyes, she forced herself to recall happy times. The summer evenings they’d ridden the horses to the top of the hill. The dogs racing ahead, flushing birds from the dozens of trees that fringed the property. At the fence line, Dan would reach across his horse to hers, take her hand, and they’d watch the sun go down. Because there were never enough adjectives to flatter a California sunset, he’d say something funny. One time he’d quoted Dylan Thomas in a terrible Welsh accent: Like an orr-ange. Like a to-mah-to. Like a gowld-fisssh bowl.

Glory gathered eggs to sell at the Farmer’s Market, trained her “last chance” dogs, and kept the checkbook balanced. One time she’d forgotten to latch the grain bins, and now generations of mice were convinced they’d reached the Promised Land. On the desk a stack of dusty condolence cards waited for her to send thank-you notes, but she couldn’t abide the pastel card faces or the poems inside. No sentiment could numb such pain. The best she could hope for was the passage of time. Dan had taught her how to build a gate that didn’t sag, how to stretch a sack of beans and rice to fill up hungry adolescent boys, and how to love with your heart full throttle.

He hadn’t taught her how to live without him.

Memories you didn’t even know we were making will sustain you, she could hear him say, but Glory had her response all ready: A memory can’t put its arms around you.

More than two hundred people came to his memorial service. After the “Casserole Months” ended, whole days went by where Glory talked only to the dogs as she ran them through their training exercises. She washed her coffee cup and cereal bowl by hand. She could let the laundry go for two or three weeks. All it took was a quick sweep of the wood floors to keep the house clean. Feeding the animals took her a half hour, tops, and after that, the time dragged. Except for Edsel, her housedog, she was alone.

“Glory, you know what they say. ‘Widowed early, that’s what you’ll get for marrying an older man,’” her mother had warned her when Glory was twenty and Dan was thirty-five, and old-fashioned enough to insist on asking her for her youngest daughter’s hand in marriage. But their age difference had nothing to do with her becoming a widow. The blame lay on a man too stubborn to take care of himself in California’s wettest winter on record.

It’s nothing, Dan insisted as he coughed his way through the farm chores. At night she plied him with vitamin C, zinc lozenges, and Nyquil. Go to bed until you beat this bug, she told him. It was three days before he gave in, and then his fever spiked to 104. By the time she drove him to the doctor, whatever bacterial infection he had been fighting had entered his bloodstream. They called it a “superbug,” antibiotic resistant. Pneumonia raced into both lungs. “Keep a smile on your face for me,” Dan asked of her in the hospital. She was too bewildered to cry. How could a fifty-three-year-old man strong enough to lift two sixty-pound saddles die from an organism visible only under a microscope?

Now the wedding day had arrived, and here she was, staring at the shirts she’d unfolded and hung back up. She dabbed at her eyes, exhausted. Her last dime had gone to the food for the pirate menu. She’d been up since dawn, and cooking for days. Two of her former foster sons—hired as servers—were due any minute. She needed to change out of work clothes and powder her cheeks. Get cracking. But she lingered, touching the empty hangers.

Turned out this wasn’t the day to let his things go, either. She pushed the box to the back of the closet, slipped on the blue dress that had been Dan’s favorite. She stepped into her dove-gray pumps and picked through her small stash of jewelry in the box on top of her dresser. Pearls today. The single strand of her grandmother’s that had yellowed over time. The matching earrings Dan gave her one Christmas when they were flush. All she needed was to gather her silver hair—it had begun turning gray the summer she was fourteen—into a bun and she was ready to open Solomon’s Oak Wedding Chapel to its inaugural event. She practiced saying an authentic “Arrgh.”

*

“Kennels,” Glory called to the rescue dogs currently in training. Well, “dog” was more accurate, because Dodge was the only one who had a chance at successful placement. Cadillac, a purebred border collie, had been adopted out twice and run home both times. She’d given up trying to place him for the moment, and was experimenting with his training to see if there was something else he might like besides herding her goats. Dodge, a mix of Golden retriever and cattle dog, had been scheduled for euthanasia the day she adopted him. Once she could get him to stop jumping up, knocking her over, chasing the mailman, and barking at nothing, Glory was sure she could find him a family. When she made a successful placement, she’d visit the shelter and take home another death row felon. Dog crimes? Growing from adorable puppies to hundred-pound handfuls. Boredom, followed by destruction. Following the nature of their breeds. Mainly dogs needed a job to do. Glory looked to each one to tell her what kind of training he needed: clicker, treat reward, hand commands. She trained them in whatever worked, agility, flyball, or Frisbee. In turn for manners, the dogs earned long walks, nutritious meals, and gentle affection. When all that was in order, she found them families. She paid home visits before placing them and followed up after. If the owner’s circumstances changed, she’d take the dog back, find another family.

Her exception was ten-pound Edsel, an Italian greyhound no bigger than a country mailbox. He had a splash of red on his long white back that resembled an English saddle. Because he moved like a ballet dancer, she suspected he’d come from show dog stock. To look at him you’d wonder what hard-hearted person could dump such a sweet-natured animal at a kill shelter. Glory quickly learned why. Edsel had a seizure disorder that required medication and a special diet. He lived indoors and had learned to do his business in a litter box. On walks, Glory allowed Dodge and Cadillac to run off-leash, but kept Edsel tethered. Sight hounds could see prey long before humans could. If a rabbit crossed Edsel’s path, he’d give chase until one of them dropped. Dodge, the big baby, was terrified of rabbits, and tried to climb into Glory’s lap when he saw one. Rabbits confused Cadillac. Why did they resist being herded into a pen? When a chicken got loose, Cadillac raced behind it, executing those on-a-dime turns border collies are famous for, and he didn’t stop until the interloper was back in the coop. Caddy, with his shocking blue eyes and plume tail, also herded Glory’s vacuum cleaner and when the wind picked up, he went after leaves.

Whenever Dan worked in his shop, though, Cadillac lay down across the doorway threshold all day. If Dan headed to the truck, Cadillac would be in the passenger seat the second Dan opened the door. Glory could feed and train the dog, but Dan was his human. Now that Dan was gone, Cadillac preferred his outdoor kennel to his bed in Glory’s bedroom. Nights she heard him howling, she wondered if he wasn’t grieving, too. She latched the two dogs in the kennels and gave them each a bully stick to keep them occupied.

She wiped her dusty shoe tops against her stockinged calves and followed the path to the flagstone patio in front of the chapel. She’d covered ten rented tables with white linen. For centerpieces, gold spray-painted toy treasure chests spilled oversized plastic gems; chocolate coins wrapped in foil, and Mardi gras bead necklaces. A small pirate flag flew at each table, featuring not one, but two skulls and crossbones, one for the bride, one for the groom. Candles in hurricane lanterns awaited lighting. The pirates had omitted flowers to spend their money on food. The reception would begin with live music by the Topgallant Troubadours, and end with a pirate ship fondant cake that had turned out so beautiful Glory still hadn’t come to terms with it being eaten.

November in Jolon, California, could be cold, or just as likely crazy warm, like today, with temps in the eighties. Blame El Nino, global warming, or pollution, all Glory cared about was that today stay balmy enough for a swordfight. When a breeze touched the back of her neck she looked up and saw ordinary clouds scudding by. Her friend Lorna, who’d turn seventy-five this year, would insist the breeze was an omen of good things to come. Lorna had faith. Dan had faith. Glory had a job to do. She fixed a flag that had gone cockeyed and looked at her watch. In four hours it would be over, and she’d have a check to pay her bills.

*

The phone rang just as she let the servers into the kitchen. “Make yourselves at home,” she called out to Gary and Pete, her two former fosters, and Robynn, a local girl working her way through school, who was sweet on Gary. Glory picked up the cordless. “Solomon’s Oak Wedding Chapel. Glory speaking.”

“Hey, Glo, it’s Caroline. What’s all this about a wedding chapel?”

Caroline Proctor, a social worker for the county, had placed each of the foster sons they’d taken in over the years, and she had taken Dan’s death hard. Sometimes she called just to talk.

“Hi C,” Glory said, making the old joke about Caroline’s name and the fruit drink. “I’m hosting an afternoon wedding here. Just something I’m trying. I’ve got to get back to it. Can we talk tomorrow?”

“This won’t take long. I have a foster girl I want you to take.”

“A girl?” Glory walked toward the hallway, straightening the Ansel Adams print of Half Dome on the wall with her free hand. Dan could take the hardest kid and turn him into gentleman. Glory was just the cook. “Not without Dan. You know we never took girls.”

“Hear me out,” Caroline said. “This kid is special. She needs a female-only situation, somebody calm and loving. Take her just for the night.”

“I can’t.”

“Pretty please,” Caroline said. “I’m on my knees, begging.”

Glory pictured stalwart Caroline Proctor in her khaki stretch pants and black blazer kneeling on the worn pine floor. Meanwhile, her kitchen had transformed into an efficient assembly line. The roasted turkeys were golden brown and the skin crisp. The trays of mashed potatoes were dotted with lakes of butter. It almost looked like the work of professional caterers. The kids were dressed in black slacks, white shirts and burgundy aprons Glory picked up at the craft store. Rented steel buffet trays covered the counters and the savory aroma of turkey and gravy filled the room.

“I can’t be responsible for anyone else just now, Caroline.”

“Look, I know you’re grieving. That’s why it’s you I want her to stay with, Glory. She’s grieving, too.”

Suddenly faint, Glory realized she hadn’t eaten all day. Years ago Dan had taken out the wall that separated the tiny kitchen from the living room, creating one big, open, living space. She sat on the arm of the couch and turned to look at the fireplace. In the lightning-struck Engelmann oak mantel, Dan had carved the words, “In this house, honor and welcome.” After ten minutes with Dan, no one was a stranger. Glory was getting used to solitude. Tonight, after the pirates sailed away, she had planned to light a fire and pour herself a glass of whatever alcoholic brew remained from the reception. She’d breathe a sigh of relief and put her feet up. But it was Thanksgiving, and the image of that lonely foster girl refused to fade. “Okay,” she said. “I just hope she doesn’t expect much in the way of conversation.”

“Glory, you invented multi-tasking. I’ve seen you drive a tractor with one hand and beat eggs with the other.”

“Only for the one night.”

“Absolutely. I’m working on finding her a permanent placement.”

That was what Caroline always said, and the Solomons ended up keeping those foster boys until they turned eighteen. “I mean it, Caroline. Tomorrow morning you come back and get her. How old is she?”

“Fourteen.”

“What happened to her?”

“Throwaway.”

In the world of foster care, that meant abandonment. Throwaways came home from school to discover their parents had moved—without them. They got kicked out of families, locked out of their homes, left in shopping malls, and the thought of it turned Glory’s stomach. Sometimes these kids went directly to the police station, but other times they tried to fend for themselves and took to the streets. Drugs and selling their bodies usually followed. When neither parent wanted the child, no relatives stepped forward, foster care was the only option.

“How can she be only fourteen and have no family? Not even a nice old grandma out there somewhere?”

The cell phone connection crackled, cutting into Caroline’s words and Glory strained to hear. “I have to go, Caroline. The wedding party will be here any minute. See you later.”

“Bye, hon.”

Glory hung up the phone and turned to the servers. “Robynn, Sterno cans on top of the fridge. Gary, butane lighters and back-up matches in the drawer to the left of the sink. Pete, can you give that silver ladle a quick polish? You guys okay if I duck out a second?” Gary nodded so Glory took that as a yes.

She took clean sheets into the second bedroom, recently painted robin’s egg blue on advice from her mother. Feeling down? Clean a toilet. Refinish a dresser. Sew yourself a holiday table runner. Keep busy and before you know it, you’ll have forgotten your troubles. The old farmhouse, last remodeled in the ‘60s, had benefitted mightily from Glory’s grief. After making the bed, she straightened the bookshelf, screwed a new light bulb in the rickety reading lamp, and added pen and paper to the desk drawer. Every foster boy who’d slept in that room had made his bed without being asked. Not always the first night, but every night after.

“Mrs. Solomon,” Pete called out. “Do you have another extension cord?”

“Of course. I’ll get it.” In the hall closet, she reached behind Dan’s duster raincoat—whenever he wore it she told him he looked like the Man From Snowy River—found the box of cords and handed it to the nervous young man.

“Thank goodness,” he said.

She patted his arm. “Pete, relax.”

“I don’t want to let you down.”

“Now when have you ever done that?” She patted his arm. “Nothing goes perfectly, but we’ll muddle through. Fortunately, we are dealing with organized pirates. We have a script to follow. Come here, you three.” She handed out the copies on which she’d highlighted the events:

5:00 P.M. Ceremony begins

5:05 Mock duel interruption

5:06 Swordfight commences

5:25 Return to chapel and finish vows

5:30 Broom jumping

5:45 Reception begins, buffet

6:15 Best man’s toast

6:25 First dance

6:45 Cake cutting

7:30 Drenching of the scupper

8:30 Fini!

Glory had forgotten what “scupper” meant, but there was time to find out. “Don’t freak out when the swords come into play. The groom told me they spent months rehearsing. No one will be hurt. At the bottom of the sheet you’ll see some pirate lingo. Feel free to use it when the opportunity presents itself.”

They looked up at her, blank-faced and worried.

“Smile! Say ‘Arrgh!’ They’re pirates, not college professors. It’ll be fun.” view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

From the Publisher:

1. Solomon’s Oak opens with the story of Alice Halloran, the woman who lost her child and her life in 1898. How does the legend of Alice’s ghost set the scene for the novel to come? How does Alice’s tragedy relate to the losses that Glory, Juniper, and Joseph have also endured?

2. Solomon’s Oak Wedding Chapel specializes in untraditional ceremonies. Why is Glory open to hosting all kinds of weddings? How does the pirate wedding at the beginning of the novel spark other unconventional relationships for Glory?

3. Glory’s specialty is “last-chance dogs”—training and nurturing abandoned pets. What strategies does Glory use to rehabilitate these last-chance dogs? Which of her dogs shows the most progress over the course of the novel? Why is Glory drawn to last-chance dogs—and to last-chance kids, like Juniper and other foster children?

4. Discuss what “closet time” means to Glory. Why does she go to the closet when grief overwhelms her? How does Juniper react to Glory’s “closet time?”

5. Discuss the first impression that Juniper makes on Glory. What “sharp edges” does Glory sense in Juniper when they first meet (49)? How does Juniper eventually change those first impressions? How does Juniper surprise Glory, and how does she disappoint her? What characteristics does Joseph glimpse in Juniper that Glory cannot see?

6. Consider the complicated relationship Glory has with her sister Halle. Why is there so much conflict between the sisters? How does Glory misjudge Halle? How does Halle express her jealousy of Glory? How does Halle make up for so many years of conflict at the end of Solomon’s Oak?

7. The “gospel according to Caroline,” says the social worker who brings Glory and Juniper together, is “a pair of unhappy people working together toward whatever kind of life there is after so much sorrow” (85). How do Glory and Juniper eventually build a shared life upon their separate sorrows? Why did Dan secretly make Caroline promise to find Glory the perfect foster child? How is Juniper a perfect match for Glory?

8. Two people live on in Joseph’s memories: his grandmother Penny, and his friend from the police force, Rico. How does Joseph balance these two sets of memories: his happy childhood discoveries with his grandmother, and his flashbacks to the shooting that killed Rico? How does Joseph grieve for Penny and for Rico, and how does he honor their memories?

9. What does Solomon’s Oak mean to Glory, Joseph, and Juniper? What artistic, financial, and symbolic possibilities does the oak tree offer each of them? How does the tree inspire each person who comes to see it? Why is the oak so difficult to capture artistically, whether on canvas or on film?

10. Discuss the unique bond between Juniper and Joseph. How does Joseph gradually help Juniper find confidence in men? How does education bring this unlikely pair closer? How does Joseph help Juniper see the world differently?

11. As Joseph talks to Glory at Lorna’s Christmas party, “It occurred to him that after separating himself from his own family, here was the person he wanted to tell his story to, but the place was too crowded, and besides, it was Christmas” (216). What is it about Glory that attracts Joseph and makes him want to tell her about his past? How is the Christmas party a turning point for Joseph and Glory’s budding relationship?

12. For Glory, “Her kitchen was her compass, her true north” (362). How does Glory find comfort in the kitchen? How does cooking bring Glory closer to both Juniper and Joseph?

13. Joseph tells Glory, “Sometimes you meet people and you just know you’ve crossed paths for a reason” (255). How does fate bring Joseph, Glory, and Juniper together? Why does their crossing of paths feel like destiny to Joseph and Juniper? Why does Glory have trouble believing in fate?

14. Discuss the meaning of family in Solomon’s Oak. Which biological families fall apart in the novel? What nonbiological bonds are forged, and how? How do the characters of Solomon’s Oak manage to redefine what family, marriage, and child-rearing mean?

15. Solomon’s Oak takes place in 2003 and 2004. Why might Mapson have chosen to set the novel in these years, rather than in the present day? What connections does Juniper, now an anthropology student, draw between the big events of 2004—earthquakes, extinctions, and bone discoveries—and her personal experiences of that year?

16. In an essay on photography, Juniper writes, “It’s about accepting that the picture you end up with will never be the picture you were trying to take” (286). How does this lesson of photography apply to life? What unexpected situations have Juniper, Glory, and Joseph found themselves in by the end of the novel, and how have they come to accept their new lives?

17. Spotting Juniper reading a novel, Glory thinks, “there was hope for any kid that read fiction. A willingness to lose one’s self in a story was the first step to learning compassion, to appreciating other cultures, to realizing what possibilities the world held for people who kept at life despite the odds” (76). What can a reader learn from Solomon’s Oak? What possibilities of compassion, cultural appreciation, and personal endurance can be found within this novel?

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»	Publisher's Book Info
»	Author Jo-Ann Mapson's web site

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