Book Blurb:
It is the early 1980s and fifteen-year-old Libby is obsessed with The Field Guide to the Trees of North America, a gift her Irish immigrant father gave her before he died. She finds solace in “The Kingdom,” a stand of red oak and thick mountain laurel near her home in suburban Pennsylvania, where she can escape from her large and unruly family and share menthol cigarettes and lukewarm beers with her best friend.
One night, while driving home, Libby’s mother, exhausted and overwhelmed with the fighting in the backseat, pulls over and orders Libby’s little sister Ellen to walk home. What none of this family knows as they drive off leaving a twelve-year-old girl on the side of the road five miles from home with darkness closing in, is what will happen next.
My Review: 3.5 stars
A Crooked Tree has the perfect premise: -one night, while driving home her 5 children, a mom kicks her 12-year-old daughter out of the car and tells her to find her way home. That should teach her a lesson about behaving, right? But this one so-called “lesson” sets off a series of events effecting the Gallagher family that no one could expect. The story is told through 15-year-old Libby’s point of view during a summer in the early 1980s.
The set-up of a young girl left on the side of the road at dusk in rural Philadelphia screamed thriller to me. With this stuck in my mind, I kept waiting for something bigger to happen. It never did and left me frustrated. Some parts were definitely suspenseful, but as I learned by the end, the story’s big event happened early on.
Overall, this was a coming-of-age story through and through. If I remove my preconceived notion that this was to be part of the thriller genre and base this review on what it actually was – a coming-of-age novel – it was a very fine read. It dealt with the typical coming-of-age themes such as family, friendship, sibling relationships, grief and growing up in a very intimate community. The author definitely has a good grasp at character driven writing.
This book filled me with nostalgia of a simpler time, without cell phones and the Internet, but reminded me how the bonds of family and friendship never change, no matter the time.
Quotes I liked:
That summer when I so desperately tried to reel us all in, I didn’t understand the forces spinning us apart.”
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