Laura's Boo!shelf: The Memory Trees

Big news, Poetry Friday friends! Today is the cover reveal for my latest middle grade novel, Takedown. This prose novel is about two middle school wrestlers, a boy and a girl, who are *not* happy when their coach makes them training partners. Curious? Stop by Nerdy Book Club for a sneak peek.This month, I'm blogging about scary stories. The next book on my October Boo!shelf is Kali Wallace's just-published YA novel, The Memory Trees.The Memory Trees is the story of 16-year-old Sorrow Lovegood, who has lived with her father and step-mother in Florida since she was eight years old. As the novel begins, Sorrow travels to rural Vermont, returning to the home and apple orchard the women in her family have owned and farmed for generations. She's devoting this summer to reconciling with her mother. But Sorrow is also hoping to trigger her own memories of the death of her older sister, Patience, eight years ago.The Memory Trees is an atmospheric mystery about two families (the Lovegoods and the Abramses) whose scuffles, hostilities, and secret friendships are woven into the stark Vermont landscape. Kali addresses issues of grief, mental illness, co-dependency, and Sorrow's fight to uncover the mystery of her sister's death.The writing is absolutely gorgeous. Sorrow's growth as she reconnects with her own history makes for a powerful story. Highly recommended!The Memory Trees published this week, October 10. Here is the blurb from Goodreads:The Memory Trees is a dark magical realism novel about a mysterious family legacy, a centuries-old feud, and a tragic loss that resurfaces when sixteen-year-old Sorrow returns to her mother’s family orchard for the summer.Sorrow Lovegood’s life has been shaped by the stories of the women who came before her: brave, resilient women who settled long ago on a mercurial apple orchard in Vermont. The land has been passed down through generations, and Sorrow and her family take pride in its strange history. Their offbeat habits may be ridiculed by other townspeople—especially their neighbors, the Abrams family—but for the first eight years of her life, the orchard is Sorrow’s whole world. Then one winter night everything changes. Sorrow’s sister Patience is tragically killed. Their mother suffers a mental breakdown. Sorrow is sent to live with her dad in Miami, away from the only home she’s ever known.Now sixteen, Sorrow’s memories of her life in Vermont are maddeningly hazy; even the details of her sister’s death are unclear. She returns to the orchard for the summer, determined to learn more about her troubled childhood and the family she left eight years ago. Why has her mother kept her distance over the years? What actually happened the night Patience died? Is the orchard trying to tell her something, or is she just imagining things?The elements play an important role in Sorrow's story. Fire and ice, heat and cold, familial warmth and long-frozen memories swirl and push and angle for control at the Lovegood homestead. That's why I'm pairing Robert Frost's "Fire and Ice" with The Memory Trees. Read the book, then let me know what you think of this pairing.Fire and IceBy Robert FrostSome say the world will end in fire,   Some say in ice.From what I’ve tasted of desireI hold with those who favor fire.But if it had to perish twice,I think I know enough of hateTo know that for destruction iceIs also greatAnd would suffice.Kali Wallace studied geology and earned a PhD in geophysics before she realized she enjoyed inventing imaginary worlds more than she liked researching the real one. She is the author of the dark fantastical young adult novels Shallow Graves and The Memory Trees, and the upcoming middle grade fantasy novel City of Islands. Her short fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, F&SF, Asimov's, Tor.com, and other speculative fiction magazines. After spending most of her life in Colorado, she now lives in southern California.I blogged about Kali's debut novel, Shallow Graves, in 2015 (read that post here). It's one of my favorite horror novels.If you'd like to read more about Kali's book, she's on a blog tour. I enjoyed this "Halloween Reads" post about The Memory Trees. And she talked about the ups and downs of writing book 2 at Chuck Wendig's blog. (So exciting! That's one of my favorite blogs about writing.) I've enjoyed both of Kali's books, so I can't wait to read her middle grade novel.See you next week. I'll have another scary story to share.