Juniper Tree Burning
By Goldberry Long
(Simon & Schuster, Paperback, 9780743222112, 464pp.)
Publication Date: June 25, 2002
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Juniper Tree Burning is a dazzling meditation on legacy and legend, rebellion and renewal.
When Jennie Braverman, formerly known as Juniper Tree Burning, gets news of her brother Sunny Boy Blue's suicide, she flees her new husband and embarks upon a mad dash across the American West toward the site of Sunny's death. Forced to confront the past, Jennie must face the shame of the childhood name she has been so happy to shed. Only after she weaves her way through a tapestry of family sorrows -- poverty, a spider-infested adobe house, and the legacy of her hippie parents -- will Jennie be able to take on her greatest challenge: accepting love.
Goldberry Long, a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, has received a Wallace Stegner Fellowship and a James Michener Fellowship. A native New Mexican, she lives in Southern California and Toronto.
Janet Maslin The New York Times Passionate...vibrant...[written] with rich, rueful, hard-won wisdom...[a] big, fiery howl of a book...powerful.
Mark Rozzo Los Angeles Times A passionate, sprawling debut...full of astonishments.
Jenny Offill The Washington Post Long skillfully evokes the minefield of memory and loss that lies at the heart of every family.
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.
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.
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