Jen Ghastin is a teaching professional with an irrepressible desire to tell stories. After teaching graphic design at North Salinas High and yoga at her own studio, her current passion is a newly published novel.
The Sun-Greeters, a paranormal tale of love, devotion and discovery, is set amidst the enthralling environs of UCSC. The story follows Jules, a freshman who dies in a fall from Tree 9, a 150-foot Douglas fir. She remains on Earth as an unseen spirit, watching over her grieving friends.
The novel delves into the lives of Jules’ diverse group of friends, known as the Sun-Greeters. These college kids, once united in their quest to solve a campus riddle and rebuild a cherished forest hangout, struggle to find their way in a world fraught with war and personal challenges. They face issues of romance, identity, addiction and activism as Jules’ spirit lingers, yearning to rekindle the camaraderie and purpose they once shared.
As the friends grapple with the aftermath of Jules’ death, they discover that the answer to their quest lies in their own journeys. Along the way, they unearth secrets of the campus and confront the bittersweet memories of their lost friend.
With its vivid portrayal of Santa Cruz, dynamic characters and a hint of the supernatural, The Sun-Greeters is a poignant exploration of friendship, loss and the search for meaning in a chaotic world.
Ghastin’s gift for storytelling began in pre-school, when she had an imaginary dog with an imaginary book strapped to its back. The dog would bring her the book, and she would read from it to her mother.
“Telling stories, whether I was lying or fantasizing or spinning tall tales, was always part of my personality,” she says.
Ghastin describes herself as a “lyrical fiction writer,” borrowing from poetry to write prose.
“I love Ray Bradbury,” she says. “He balanced a fantastical story with a lyric tone. I love writing like Nabokov’s Lolita, when the sound and the story are working together.”
The Sun-Greeters took shape in the early 2000s at UCSC as part of her creative writing thesis.
She returned to the story in 2018 after meditating on life alignment during yoga teacher training.
“The one thing I needed to do to feel in alignment was to finish my oldest unfinished project,” she says.
Ghastin took out the saved pieces on index cards and put them all over the floor “like one of those crazy people in the movies.” She describes her “20-years-older disciplined self” waking up at 5am, writing for an hour every day.
Her son helped during the pandemic, paid to listen as she read the story aloud, mindful of his reactions.
Ghastin weaves real-life experiences into her story, and local readers may recognize familiar things, like City on a Hill Press and many campus locations.
“One of our favorite things to do as undergraduates was to go find the magical things there. in the forest, whether it was Tree 9 or Cat’s Cradle or Elfland, or whatever was rumored to be hidden there.”
Climbing Tree 9, whose branches grew close enough to the ground to allow easy reach, was once a rite of passage for students.
“It was a really dangerous activity, climbing this huge tree, and there are ghost stories about a little girl associated with that tree, from the 1800s and 1900s.”
In describing Jules’ fall from Tree 9, she called upon a memory of her own frightening fall. As a second-grader, when she practiced sliding down the stairway banister at home, she accidentally jumped over the banister and fell from the second floor to the first floor.
“I had an Alice In Wonderland moment in the one second it took to fall, thinking, what’s happening, where am I? I was afraid of getting in trouble, so I wasn’t rushed to the ER with a broken foot until dad came home and saw me crawling about.”
In the ’80s and ’90s, Elfland was a hangout on campus created inside of tree-circles, each with its own name, and filled with furniture and art.
“To this day,” says Ghastin, “if you wander up to the Crown Meadow, you’ll see tree circles with relics in them.”
Jen Ghastin will sign copies of her book at 6pm on First Friday, Nov. 1, with a reading at 7pm, at the Homeless Garden Project, 1338 Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz.
