Fault Line

by Jo-Ann Mapson

The red nightie network --
First chair --
Thirty-second poses --
Baby steps --
Hank and Chloe --
Love and death ride the same pony: Geographics; Figures from a funeral procession --
Cakewalk --
The Greenbroke sisters -Lillie and Rose: Owning the view; Hoofbeats; The red horse --
Mortar --
The rings of Saturn --
Statistics

Genres: Fiction

144 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1989

About the author

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 NewMexico, Mapson lives today in Costa 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."

Reviews

[Jean · Rating 2 out of 5]

As with any short story collection, some stories were engaging to me - others not so much. Very much 'student writing'. A couple stories eventually evolved into novels by this author. I have read some of her later books - specifically the Bad Girl Creek series and, for the most part, enjoyed them - which is why I picked up this slim volume at a used book sale. Fans of the author might enjoy reading her early writing and how it evolved.
Some explicit language and situations.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most short-story collections have a mixture of high and lower quality offerings. All the stories in this book are winners. In different ways, they expose the demons we all deal with throughout our lives. Some of them also contain the seeds of characters who populate my favorite Mapson novels.

[Diana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jo-Ann Mapson is one of my favorite authors, but this book is not a favorite. The main problem is that short stories are not my favorite genre.
The stories just did not seem to tell a complete story.