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This is another book club read for me. I absolutely loved a previous book by this author, The Work of Wolves but I had a little bit harder time connecting with this book. Some of the gals in the group loved this one so to each her own. Some books click and some don't. I hope you love it!
Good luck and be sure to stop back next week!
Twisted Tree
Twisted Tree
Twisted Tree by Kent Meyers
Hardcover, 304 pages
Published September 24th 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Hayley Jo Zimmerman is gone. Taken. And the people of small-town Twisted Tree must come to terms with this terrible event—their loss, their place in it, and the secrets they all carry.
In this brilliantly written novel, one girl’s story unfolds through the stories of those who knew her. A supermarket clerk recalls an encounter with a disturbingly thin Hayley Jo. Sophie, Twisted Tree’s resident but secretly not-so-altruistic saint, is shaken by a single, passing moment during Hayley Jo’s adolescence. Dark memories paralyze Richard Mattingly as he as he struggles to help his son, Clay, cope with their new loss. An ex-priest remembers baptizing Hayley Jo and seeing her with her best friend, Laura, whose mother the priest once loved. And Laura berates herself for all the running they did, how it fed her friend’s withdrawal, and how there were so many secrets she didn’t see. And so, Hayley Jo’s absence recasts the lives of others and connects them, her death rooting itself into the community in astonishingly violent and tender ways.
Twisted Tree is a tribute to the powerful effect one person's life can have on everyone she knew. Solidly in the company of Aryn Kyle, Kent Haruf, and Peter Matthiessen, Kent Meyers is one of the best contemporary writers on the American West. Here he also takes us into the complexity of community regardless of landscape. Readers will be entranced by Twisted Tree.
In this brilliantly written novel, one girl’s story unfolds through the stories of those who knew her. A supermarket clerk recalls an encounter with a disturbingly thin Hayley Jo. Sophie, Twisted Tree’s resident but secretly not-so-altruistic saint, is shaken by a single, passing moment during Hayley Jo’s adolescence. Dark memories paralyze Richard Mattingly as he as he struggles to help his son, Clay, cope with their new loss. An ex-priest remembers baptizing Hayley Jo and seeing her with her best friend, Laura, whose mother the priest once loved. And Laura berates herself for all the running they did, how it fed her friend’s withdrawal, and how there were so many secrets she didn’t see. And so, Hayley Jo’s absence recasts the lives of others and connects them, her death rooting itself into the community in astonishingly violent and tender ways.
Twisted Tree is a tribute to the powerful effect one person's life can have on everyone she knew. Solidly in the company of Aryn Kyle, Kent Haruf, and Peter Matthiessen, Kent Meyers is one of the best contemporary writers on the American West. Here he also takes us into the complexity of community regardless of landscape. Readers will be entranced by Twisted Tree.
About the author
Kent Meyers is the author of The Work of Wolves, Light in the Crossing, The River Warren, and The Witness of Combines. A finalist for the PEN/West Award, he is a recipient of an ALA Alex Award, two Minnesota Book Awards, and a Mountains and Plains Booksellers Association Award. He lives in Spearfish, South Dakota, where he teaches at Black Hills State University.
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