Picture of Jo-ann Mapson

Creative Writing and Literary Arts 

M.F.A.,Vermont College of Norwich University 

B.A., California State University, Long Beach

jamapson@aol.com

Jo—Ann Mapson is the author of ten books of fiction, including the bestselling novels Hank & Chloe, The Wilder Sisters, and Bad Girl Creek. Blue Rodeo, tier second novel, was made into a CBS TV movie.
Several of her books have been BookSense picks, and most are available on audio, tape, large print, and Braille. Considered “mainstream” in terms of genre, subjects she writes about include: women’s lives, friendships, raising children, working, and loving good men. Her latest novel is The Owl & Moon Cafe. She teaches in the MFA in Writing Program at UAA. and raised in Southern California, she now lives in Anchorage with her husband, artist Stewart Allison, and their four dogs.

Bad Girl Creek

Book cover of Bad Girl Creek     "Set against the gorgeous backdrop of California's central coast, Bad Girl Creek is the inspiring story of how friendship and purpose can transform even the most compromised of women, as well as situations. Jo-Ann Mapson chronicles female strength, family complexities, life crises, the use of humor as a curative power, and love in all its many aspects. Bad Girl Creek is a tragicomedy of female friendship in the new American West."   

Hank and Chloe

Book cover of Hank and Chloe    

"Chloe Morgan lives for horses and her dog, Hannah. To earn a slight living and keep bill collectors satisfied, she waits tables at a greasy spoon and teaches horseback riding on the side. Home is a cabin in the backwoods minus electricity or running water. She meets Hank, a college professor, and both find magic where neither expected it."

Along Came Mary: A Bad Girl Creek Novel

Book cover of Along Came Mary: A Bad Girl Creek Novel    

After finally wising up to her drunken rodeo crooner lover, Mary Madigan saddles up her twin border collies and takes her act on the road, leaving miles of heartache and highway behind. When she meets Rick, a charming and persistent journalist haunted by his own ghosts, she suddenly has a travel companion and a new lover (with an all-too-familiar set of tricks).

Their travels ultimately bring them to Bad Girl Creek, where the waters have already been troubled. Phoebe's pregnancy is life-threatening, Nance's break-up diet has turned dangerously successful, Beryl is still struggling to adjust to life after prison, and HIV-positive Ness is distancing herself from the "healthy" world -- if you can call it that.

But these are the Bad Girl Creek ladies: they are resilient. The ways they pull together, cheer each other on through good times and bad, and cope with every curve life throws at them make up the heart and soul of this powerful and big-hearted novel.

The Wilder Sisters

Book cover of The Wilder Sisters     The Wilder sisters fall in love with men when they least expect it—and most need it. Rose, the older, more practical one, is a widow who lives in New Mexico and has two ungrateful kids, a bored dog, and a horse with a bad back. Lily, the younger, more daring sister, lives In Southern California, where she has put her career before everything else—including love. Lily and Rose flee to their parents’ ranch, for some emotional detox. But the two haven’t spoken In five long years, and spending time together Is the last thing they’d planned on. Nor had either anticipated being so actively pursued by lovestruck men. Readers will be in their corner all the way as they rediscover the bonds of sisterhood and slowly open their hearts to love.   

The Owl & Moon Cafe

Book cover of The Owl & Moon Cafe    

After losing her position at the local university, Mariah Moon will do anything to keep her gifted twelve-year-old daughter Lindsay, in a prestigious private school -- which means moving in with her mother and mother in an apartment above The Owl & Moon Café. When her mother, Allegra, is diagnosed with leukemia, Mariah rises to the challenge of running the café: mastering her mother’s famous fudge and chatting up customers—including a man who might just reawaken her heart. Meanwhile, Lindsay’s controversial entry in a major national science contest creates a minor maelstrom in the cosseted Monterey Bay community. And Allegra, with one last great love affair in her, will revisit a man she loved so many years ago, and disclose the biggest secret of the Moon family: the identity of Mariah’s father. Will the Moon women recognize this as the moment to do away with their family history of dubiously fathered children, and learn to forgive others and themselves in order to move forward In her poignant new novel, bestselling author Jo-Ann Mapson explores the complexities of love and family with the keen eye and stylistic grace that have made her books perennial favorites.

Shadow Ranch

Book cover of Shadow Ranch    

Lainie Carpenter has lost her four-year-old son and is about to lose her marriage and sanity as well. The impact of young Spencer’s death has strongly touched the lives of her fierce and crusty grandfather, the eighty-year-old Bop, and her slacker brother Russell, whose own love relationship is rapidly coming undone. When Bop falls in love with Earlynn Sommers, a retired stripper, their earthy romance touches each of the Carpenters’ lives in refreshing, unexpected ways.

Loving Chloe

Book cover of Loving Chloe     When thirty-four-year-old Chloe Morgan appears on Hank Oliver’s ‘doorstep in Cameron, Arizona, she. arrives with more than her old white German shepherd, Hannah, and a rambunctious young horse in tow. Chloe is pregnant with hank’s child, and she’s as tough-talking and vulnerable, skittish and tender a when last we saw her in Jo-Ann Mapson’s acclaimed first novel, Hank & Chloe. As Chloe and Hank settle somewhat uneasily into domesticity, a local Navajo legend named Junior Whitebear returns home to collect his father’s ashes and renew his own spirit after years spent in the art-world fast lane. When Junior arrives at the reservation, he doesn't’t expect to find a son he fathered unwittingly nine years ago; nor is he looking to fall in love with Chloe and to deliver her baby girl. Both events change his life, and the lives of those around him, forever, passionate love story, Loving Chloe explores the emotional complexity of a love triangle with sympathy, humor, and compassion.   

Goodbye, Earl

Book cover of Goodbye Earl    

Five challenging years have passed in the lives of the ladies of Bad Girl Creek. Beryl, Nance, Ness, and Phoebe have experienced their share of hardship and heartache but also much love and happiness. Beryl now lives with Earl in Alaska, where the fissures in their relationship have started to spread. But then Earl disappears one wintry night. Nance, on the heels of a string of devastating miscarriages, has been advised to stop trying for a baby. Phoebe finds herself overwhelmed by her five-year-old daughter. Sally. and an enigmatic Southern charmer named Andrew. And Ness tenderly nurses David Snow as he gradually succumbs to AIDS. The farm’s successes have brought profits, but when a nursery opens across the road, the bar is set higher yet again. Life rolls on, though, and in the midst of myriad misfortunes come explosive surprises. The old friends are challenged to reunite once again, to rediscover with fresh eyes the powerful words in Aunt Sadie’s journal: Live life to the fullest. Love as often as you can. Regret nothing. Eat hearty. Laugh often. Plant flowers. And don’t forget to dance.

Blue Rodeo

Book cover of Blue Rodeo    

Those who do not remember family history are condemned to repeat it... Haunted by a failed marriage, a resentful son left deaf by a bout of meningitis, and the slow death of her artistic aspirations, Margaret Yearwood takes refuge in Blue Dog, New Mexico. There, in the shadow of Shiprock Mountain, and in the unlikely arms of Owen Garrett, she finds the courage to love again, and to be loved. And she comes to realize that even the most primal wounds scar over and that there’s nothing so renewable or so healing as passion. This is a bittersweet story of ordinary people who must learn to heal family bonds before are permanently severed..