Owen’s Daughter

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. [em]Agent: Deborah Schneider, Gelfman Schneider Agency. (July) [/em]