Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
The Ghosthead Oak is unlike any other tree in the coastal crescent between New Orleans and Apalachicola. In this mysterious country of backwater bays and slow-running rivers, the tree was once a knee-high seedling brushed by the black boot of Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortez. Now, its massive branches spread out so long and thick they're often mistaken for dinosaur necks. One day, the Widow Anson, over whose land the Ghosthead Oak has kept watch for 500 years, walks into a biker bar, hires a man in a yellow ball cap, and leads him to the tree. Thirty minutes later, the mammoth oak is lying on the ground, dead. Based on a true story, "The Widow and the Tree" lyrically evokes life in the backwaters of the Gulf Coast while taking the reader on a journey alongside the widow, as she makes her mystifying and painful decision.
Synopsis
In the mysterious country of coastal Alabama's backwater bays and slow-running rivers where bull alligators rumble the nerves of lesser creatures, stands Ghosthead Oak, a fabled giant tree that was a knee-high seedling brushed by the black boot of Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortez. It is unlike any other tree along the whole coastal crescent from New Orleans to Apalachicola, and has kept watch over the widow's family land for five hundred years, a spirit guide and friend to her since childhood. Her father is buried in its shade. So why would she walk into a biker bar and hire a man with a yellow ballcap to wield his chainsaw and cut a gash around its trunk, to kill Ghosthead Oak with 30 minutes' work? This book is based on a true story. Sonny Brewer's fourth novel, "The Widow and the Tree, " provokes readers to consider the widow's dark deed as a sympathetic act, to ask might you have done the same thing?
Synopsis
In the mysterious country of coastal Alabama, a fabled giant tree has kept watch over a widow's family land for 500 years. Her father is buried in its shade. So why would she hire someone to kill Ghosthead Oak? Brewer's provocative novel is based on a true story.
Synopsis
The magnificent Ghosthead Oak has stood watch over coastal Alabamas mysterious backwater bays and slow-running rivers, where bull alligators rumble the nerves of lesser creatures and every living thing has the capacity to kill, for five hundred years. Some say the fabled giant tree was once a knee-high seedling brushed by the black boot of Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortez. No other tree along the entire coastal crescent from New Orleans to Apalachicola can rival its majesty or its power to draw people to it.
In silence and with dignity, the Ghosthead has served as sentinel to the widows family land for countless generations. It was a childhood friend and a spirit guide in troubled times. Her father is buried in its shade.
So why would the widow walk into a biker bar and hire a man to fire his chainsaw and inflict fatal gashes around its trunk, ending in a few minutes what took five centuries to create?
The Widow and the Tree is a tale of dark deeds committed with mercy in mind, provoking the reader to ask: Would I have done the same thing? This book is based on a true story.
About the Author
Considered one of the Souths finest storytellers, Sonny Brewer is the author of the novels The Poet of Tolstoy Park, A Sound Like Thunder, Cormac, and editor of the Blue Moon Café anthology series. He founded Over the Transom Bookstore and the Fairhope Center for the Writing Arts. He lives in Alabama.