Family Trees: A Novel of the Northwest

Description

Corvallis, Oregon, 2009. The economy is still in the tank from the Great Recession, and the Garlands, owners of the largest family-owned forest tracts in the county, are reeling from a series of devastating personal losses. Nobody's having a harder time coping than Will Trask, the son-in-law who grew up in a logging family in the neighboring timber town of Eden Mills. Everyone loves the trees, but Will, now a forestry consultant and real estate agent, faces a unique struggle in straddling the two worlds-those who own the forests and those who cut them down. The loss of his wife, the cherished daughter of the Garland clan, has been a crushing blow, complicating his precarious family position. Family Trees is a story of the ways in which people who are stuck find the means to break free and move on. It examines the value as well as the limits of family ties, celebrating, above all, the courage it takes to recognize the power of the present moment, the power of now. Award-winning author of the beloved Children of the River and A Heart for Any Fate, Linda Crew now delivers her long-awaited Oregon family saga, a life-affirming and perfect comfort-of-a-read for these turbulent times.

Linda Crew is a fourth-generation Oregonian and Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Oregon's School of Journalism. Among her nine books are historical novels Fire on the Wind (1933 Tillamook Burn), Brides of Eden: A True Story Imagined, and A Heart for Any Fate: Westward to Oregon: 1845, winner of the Oregon Book Award and the Willa, named for Willa Cather and given by Women Writing the West. Her first novel, Children of the River, won the International Reading Association's Children's Book Award. Recent memoirs include Accidental Addict and Wedding in Yangshuo. She lives at Wake Robin Farm in Corvallis, Oregon, where she and her husband are tree farmers.