Cheryl Wagner, Author
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I was born to a Jewish mother and a Catholic father in Passaic, New Jersey, where I was raised till the age of twelve. My earliest happy memories are of books, and I credit my mother with instilling in me a love of reading. She made regular trips to the public library with one of her brood in the stroller and the rest of us trailing along. The library was an exciting place to me; it smelled of knowledge and possibilities and unlimited pleasure. I loved summer not only for its freedom from schedule and routine but for the endless hours I could spend reading. I read under the covers at night by the crack of light coming in from the kitchen; I slid library books in front of my textbooks at school when I couldn’t bear waiting to find out what happened next. Reading is like breathing to me, essential and life giving, and eventually led to writing- stories, plays, even a short-lived neighborhood newspaper, abandoned when I realized the arduousness of handwriting every copy. I always imagined I would write a book one day, and in 2010, I wrote the story you are holding in your hand. I knew it was my book; the one I had been waiting to write.
I moved to San Francisco in 1977. After forgoing a spiritual practice for sixteen years, I began attending a small church in the living room of a Victorian house where I began my journey as a Christian at the age of twenty-eight. I married my beloved husband Joe in 1985; we have two adult sons and a wonderful daughter-in-law , and now a darling granddaughter who brings us much joy. In 2001, I began a new and unexpected career as a professional clown, and have loved every minute of it.
I count my decision to follow Christ as the best one I’ve ever made, and since then my life has been far more exciting and authentic than it was when I was traveling it alone. My passion and purpose have become listening for his voice and abandoning myself to his call, and it is a journey I would not have wanted to miss.
When Carol was in her late forties, her father told her that at the moment of her birth, he was at the funeral home picking out her casket. Her parents had been told she had died in utero and her mother, very ill at the time, had been rushed to the hospital where Carol unexpectedly made her way back into the world, premature but alive. Her father’s words were a piece of a puzzle whose solution had eluded Carol all her life. Since her first painting at the age of eleven, many of her visualizations have had an out-of-the-body perspective. Throughout Carol’s childhood, her mother shared with Carol her strong Catholic spiritual beliefs. These carried her mother through a lifetime of illness, which ended while Carol studied Fine Art at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. In the wake of that loss, Carol moved to California and furthered her education by studying Conceptual Art at the University of California in San Francisco.
Carol’s early work of hand drafting and illustrating for architects, engineers, and a lighting designer allowed her to focus on details that kept her grounded. As Carol’s children grew, so did her time to paint. A cancer diagnosis spurred Carol to focus on her need to express herself in murals and portraiture, including a series of guardian angel portraits using parents as the persona of their babies’ protectors.
All these forces came together in this book. It brought Carol great joy to research and visually interpret Christian scripture and Jewish traditions during the Roman occupation, and cultural artifacts of the Herodian era.
Carol enjoyed the blessings of each day with her precious husband, and often patron, Bob, their three children and four grandchildren, whom she called their finest creations. Sadly, Carol passed away within a year of the book's publication. She called the art of the book her "legacy work".
Carol Salomon-Bryant, Illustrator