How far can one person, or even one family be pushed before it becomes too much? How much can a single mother give up to ensure that her daughter has the very best in life? In The Owl and Moon Cafe by Jo-Ann Mapson, Mariah Moon will be faced with the hardest issues a woman can face. How she will manage to pull through is anyone's guess.
Mariah Moon is a sociology professor at a small California college. She's been teaching there for eight years and is expecting to hear that she'll be tenured at the beginning of the school year. Instead she is told that she's being let got as her position is being done away with. For Mariah, a single mother with no child support, this is devastating. Her 12 year old daughter Lindsay is enrolled at a prestigious girl’s school and Mariah is unsure how she will continue to pay the tuition. Her only option is to move back in with her mother and grandmother and begin waiting tables at the family business, The Owl and Moon Cafe. Mariah's relationship with her mother however has always been strained.
Allegra Moon grew up in the 60's as a free-spirited child. She fell in love during a summer fling and ended up pregnant and unwed at 16. She was never ashamed of this and lived her life as she liked, much to the embarrassment of her daughter, Mariah and her staunchly catholic mother, Bess. Mariah in turn was very straight-laced and vowed that she would be nothing like her mother, until she became pregnant and unwed at 18. This did nothing to bring Allegra and Mariah closer and Mariah would continue to rail at her mother through the years about the father that she didn't know. When Allegra is diagnosed with leukemia the family is thrown into what seems to be a downward spiral. The only bright points for Mariah are her daughter, and her blossoming relationship with a charming Scotsman who is only in town for a few months. When a new doctor comes in to direct Allegra's care and captures her heart, Mariah will be faced with decisions and revelations that she never could have expected.
At first the characters in The Owl and Moon Cafe seem rather cookie-cutter and stereotypical. It takes some time to get under the surface and see that there is some depth and quite a bit of passion brewing. Mariah tends to grate a little as she looks at everything from a sociological viewpoint. You just want to shake her and yell "Shut up and kiss the handsome guy already!!" I was also a bit freaked out by the teenage daughter's fascination with Carl Sagan. That was a bit odd. And once the family secrets come flooding out, the reader isn't really surprised so much as relieved. We've figured them out pages back but we've been waiting for everyone else to catch up. All in all it wasn't a bad piece of fiction. Not too light, not too heavy. I would suggest it as good reading for the beach or a lazy Saturday.
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Paperback: 368 pages
Publisher: Simon & Schuster (July 4, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN: 0743266412
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