The Rowan Tree: A Novel - Softcover

Rowan Ellway is a young college president; Easter Blue, an impassioned student leader. Upon graduation, she takes a fellowship to Africa, and they lose touch. When, decades later, they meet again, they discover that their prior bond was but a rehearsal for the world stage. THE ROWAN TREE reaches from the tumultuous 1960s into humanity’s future, encompassing the worlds of politics, sport, ballet, presidential leadership, and world governance. An international cast of characters personifies the catalytic role of love in political change. Replete with illicit loves, quixotic quests, and inextinguishable hope, THE ROWAN TREE foretells a dignitarian world much as the story of King Arthur and the round table sowed the seeds of democracy.

Robert Fuller is a physicist, a former president of Oberlin College, and a leader of the dignity movement to overcome rankism. He has consulted with Indira Gandhi, met with Jimmy Carter regarding the president’s Commission on World Hunger, worked in the USSR to defuse the Cold War, and, recently, keynoted a Dignity for All conference hosted by the president of Bangladesh. Fuller’s books on dignity and rankism have been published in India, Bangladesh, Korea, and China, and featured in the New York Times, the Oprah Magazine, the Boston Globe, NPR, C-Span, the BBC, and in TED talks. He has four children and he lives in Berkeley with his wife Claire Sheridan. The Rowan Tree is his first novel.