Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Fiction & Related items
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http://www.elizabethcrookbooks.c …

THE WHICH WAY TREE

Elizabeth Crook

Crook’s fifth novel, is a story of adventure and revenge – perfect for readers of True Grit and The Sisters Brothers. It is a timeless story of love, friendship, family, and retribution.

Narrated by Benjamin, a young orphan living in the Texas Hill Country in the 1860s, the novel recounts his half-sister Sam's fierce determination to seek out and finish off the panther that killed her mother right before he eyes, when she was only six years old.

Alternately aided and obstructed by a cast of characters including Pacheco, a gallant Mexican outlaw, Preacher Dob, a guilt-ridden minister with an aged but unstoppable tracking dog named Zechariah, and Clarence Hanlin, a sadistic Confederate soldier bent on his own revenge, Benjamin and Sam follow the trail of El Demon De Dos Dedos–the panther that is missing two toes–who’s ferocity and violent temperament have become legend from the Mexican border, north.

Benjamin pulls readers into a world that is wild and rebellious, funny and fierce – a fully realized slice of Americana untouched by modern society.

Elizabeth Crook has been edited by Jackie Onassis, had her film rights optioned by Robert Duvall (for this very book), been blurbed by the likes of Geraldine Brooks and Julia Glass.

Elizabeth Crook attended Baylor University and graduated from Rice University in 1982. She has written four novels and served on the council of the Texas Institute of Letters and the board of the Texas Book Festival. She is a member of Women Writing the West, Western Writers of America and The Texas Philosophical Society, and was selected the honored writer for 2006 Texas Writers' Month. The Night Journal was awarded the 2007 Spur award for Best Long Novel of the West. Monday, Monday was awarded the 2015 Jesse H. Jones award for fiction. Elizabeth currently lives in Austin with her family.

Available products
Book Published 2018-02-06 by Little Brown
Book Published 2018-02-06 by Little Brown

Comments

When I began to read this book its unique voice appealed to me immediately. Elizabeth Crook has written a beautiful novel with wonderful characters.

The Which Way Tree is one part Track of the Cat, one part True Grit, and one part Tom Sawyer, a ruthless pedigree for a novel that displays human nature in its most beautiful forma marvel.

UK & Commonwealth: Scribe

Elizabeth Crook has created a book of marvels. Its comedy is steeped in the hardscrabble tragedies of a wilder old America. You will even catch an echo of Twain's wit in the picaresque narration.

Elizabeth Crook has invented a brilliant way of seeing the old Texas frontier: at very close range, through the eyes of a wise-beyond-his-years seventeen-year-old boy and the sister whose defiant quest he joins. The result is a small-scale masterwork, richly detailed and beautifully rendered.

In The Which Way Tree, Elizabeth Crook has conjured a powerful, sly, and often charming tale delivered in the winning voice of Benjamin. This novel is a fast-paced story resonating with rich characters and mythic elements that come to us as folklore that mustn't be doubted.

Preacher Dob said, Vengeance belongs to the Lord, Samantha. She said, Only if he can beat me to it.' This told me everything I needed to know about Samantha Shreve, a character who knocked my socks off from her first appearance on the page. This book is the stuff of legends, tales told for a hundred years around Texas campfires. Written in a form that is historically accurate and yet feels painstakingly intimate, THE WHICH WAY TREE is unlike anything I've read before.

Not since True Grit have I read a novel as charming, exciting, suspenseful, and pitch-perfect asThe Which Way Tree. Elizabeth Crook's debut is winning from first page to last.