The Tree of Life
Hugh Nissenson
Introduction by Margo Jefferson
Take a Moment and read an excerpt from this book.
Retail: $14.95. SALE PRICE $10.00
Nominated for The National Book Award and The Pen Faulkner Award
Read Alan Berger's essay on Nissenson's work.
From Margo Jefferson’s Introduction: "A beautifully paced book . . . [it] allows the shocks and resonances to gather slowly, the way they do in life when you are taking everything in, but cannot yet allow yourself to admit how much you’ve been affected . . . In thrall to the powers Mr. Nissenson has invoked and wielded with such fearful symmetry — the powers of documentation and of vision — we can only read on."
The year is 1811. Having suffered a loss of faith, Thomas Keene, Congregational minister from New England, abandons the East and moves to Richland County on the Ohio frontier. The Tree of Life is Keene's journal: stories and jottings appear alongside accounting entries and poems, coarse jokes and sermons, woodcuts and maps. In this "Waste Book," Keene conveys his longing for a young widow, his fascination with John Chapman (Johnny Appleseed), and his resolve in the face of the growing enmity between his fellow settlers and the Delaware Indians. The Tree of Life reveals a man of intellect and passion as he confronts the raw country.
"The book is a work of art and no one who reads it will ever forget it." — David McCullough
"It is a tale more moving and haunting than one thinks it can possibly be." — The Village Voice
"The juxtaposition of horror and information perfectly captures the genius of this imagined diary. . . . Scarcely a word is wasted. Hardly an aspect of the struggle to found a new civilization remains untouched. The Tree of Life dramatizes, sometimes with almost unbearable intensity, the American dream and its attendant nightmare." — TIME Magazine
"[The Tree of Life] confronts us where our deepest and most disturbing fantasies intersect with our sense of history.…Given the richness of its texture and the strength of whichever of its threads one pursues, one can imagine that its force will grow and take an ever tighter grip on our understanding of the American past. It is a book that plants deep seeds." — New York Times
Hugh Nissenson was born in New York City in 1933. After graduating from Swarthmore College, he published his first short story in Harper's Magazine in 1958. He has taught writing at Yale, Barnard, and Auburn Theological Seminary, and is the author of a memoir, three collections of short stories and journals, and three novels. He most recent novel, The Song of the Earth, is set in the mid-21st century.
Margo Jefferson is a cultural critic for the New York Times. In 1995, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.
Friend of Mankind & Other StoriesJulian Mazor
Hardcover,
279 pp.,
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Retail: $19.95. BACKLIST SALE PRICE $16.00 These stories, ten in all, take place in Ireland, New York City and Washington, D.C., and Virginia, Texas, and Colorado. The characters represent the various stages of man—from boyhood and youth to the first precincts of old age. John Lionel, who appeared in four stories collected in Julian Mazor's earlier volume . . . [read more] |