Juniper Tree Burning: A Novel - Softcover

Michelle Vellucci People This lush first novel is part family drama, part fairy tale (Brothers Grimm, not Disney)...Entertaining but unflinching...it's an unsentimental song of grief and forgiveness. Bottom Line: Blaze of glory. Deirdre Donahue USA Today Long is wildly gifted...The writing, which captures both rage and love, is remarkable...Few writers have captured so perfectly the bond between siblings. Jenny Offill The Washington Post Long skillfully evokes the minefield of memory and loss that lies at the heart of every family. Mark Rozzo Los Angeles Times A passionate, sprawling debut...full of astonishments. Janet Maslin The New York Times Passionate...vibrant...[written] with rich, rueful, hard-won wisdom...[a] big, fiery howl of a book...powerful.

Juniper Tree Burning hates her name. It represents everything she despises about her life: her "hippie" mother, Faith, who lives by healing herbs and horoscopes; her father, Ray, a cursing, abusive guitar-playing storyteller; her sick little brother, Sunny, whom she alternately mothers and resents; and the poverty of her isolated New Mexico town. Juniper flees them all, to private school in New England, to turn herself into someone new: Jennie. She raises herself to be strong and smart: a medical student who hustles a little pool on the side, an obsessive runner, and a self-proclaimed Ugly Chick With Attitude. Then, one night the Seattle Police call. Her brother, Sunny, has leaped off a ferry and killed himself. And so begins the biggest journey of her life. As Jennie retraces the steps of her brother, the same path traveled by generations of her family, she confronts the stories they have woven, the tapestry of the lives they have built on the coasts and deserts of the West and comes to terms with her past, her present, and her future.