The Columbarium is the backdrop for peering into the eccentric lives of some of the dead, as well as of the people they left behind. When Jed takes a job fixing up the Columbarium, he is quickly thrust into the lives of strangers, both living and dead, and ultimately comes to terms with his past and his own psychological demons.
Where can you find a cookie jar in the shape of a baseball filled with the ashes of an 84-year-old Chinese woman or a cardboard take-out carton with the remains of a 350-pound, agoraphobic pot-dealer? The Columbarium is the backdrop for peering into the eccentric lives of some of the dead, as well as of the people they left behind. When Jed takes a job fixing up the Columbarium, he is quickly thrust into the lives of strangers, both living and dead, and ultimately comes to terms with his past and his own psychological demons.
Professional Reviews
Chico Enterprise-Record
A new novel by Chico writer Emily Gallo continues the story of one Jedidiah Gibbons, “a tall, thin, muscular African-American. He was pushing fifty but easily looked fifteen years younger.… He was one of those people who turned heads but not because of his physical attractiveness, although he was quite handsome. It was his air of mystery and aloofness that drew them in.”
Jed is in San Francisco, looking for another new start: “This time he was running from the law.” Part of his history is told in “Venice Beach,” published earlier this year, but he was one of many characters. In “The Columbarium” ($12.95 in paperback from CreateSpace; also for Amazon Kindle) the focus is on Jed, a survivor of the Jonestown massacre in Guyana.
A note indicates that “the Columbarium is a real place, a designated landmark at One Lorraine Court in San Francisco…. It was three stories high and built as a rotunda,” with the walls containing thousands of niches holding urns of every variety, some “ornately decorated with items that were obviously meaningful to those who knew the dead person as well as to the ones whose ashes were inside.”
At Glide Memorial Church, an attractive social worker named Monica directs Jed to a job at the columbarium, which had fallen into disrepair. Owned by the Neptune Society, the facility needed a gardener, a craftsman, an artist, someone who cared. That was Jed.
And he is surrounded in the community by outcasts and the forgotten. There is Rose, an 80-year-old Chinese woman enamored of the baseball Giants; Sam, whose dear wife Sadie is dying and who befriends Jed and teaches him Yiddish; Goldie, 65 and very ill, part of a marijuana selling operation, who also loves Broadway musicals. And many more.
As Jed becomes the caretaker of the columbarium he must confront his anger at the Jonestown murders which took away his family, and allow love, all but pushed away, to enter once again.
The columbarium is vandalized; that unites his friends, the unlikeliest of characters, to rally around Jed. Gallo tells the story of a good but flawed man whose transformation through the dailyness of life is quiet yet profound.
NetGalley
Jed was a child when his family was killed in the Jonestown massacre; he barely escaped with his life. He’s spent most of his life drifting from one place to another and now he’s landed a job at the Columbarium, a place where the cremated remains of loved ones reside alongside mementos of their lives. Jed has been hired to make some much needed repairs to the building, so that family and friends will have a pleasing place to visit their departed loved ones. It’s a job, and Jed needs a job, but it’s not until the Columbarium is broken in to and vandalized that he realizes what a unique and special place he works in. I confess I didn’t know what a columbarium was before I read this book. It seemed like an odd topic for a story, but when I read the first page of this book, all doubt fled my mind. Beautifully written, with heart and poignancy, this is a book you will never forget
Marge Gonzalez
The Columbarium by Emily Gallo late 60’s. As a child, Jed, the fiftyish protagonist, lost his family in the mass suicides and killings at Jonestown in Guyana. One of the few survivors, he ran as fast as he could after witnessing the death of both his mother and sister. This is the backdrop. Now he is on the run again, this time in California, and through happenstance he finds work as the caretaker of the Columbarium, a gorgeous if rundown building for the storage and display of cremains. This book might be subtitled “how to deal with grief and death.” Sad as that sounds, the book is uplifting as the endearing characters say “yes” to life through the pain of their losses. For Jed, the line between life and death is not cleanly demarcated. He talks to the urns and sings to them every day. The colorful and diverse visitors to the Columbarium help Jed move forward in a journey to find a way to let his own ghosts rest in peace. An additional feature is Emily’s song. No Woman No Cry, at her website.
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