The Tree of Life

Plot

Winner of the Runners-up Prize for the American Book Award for 1985, this is a novel about America in its youth. The story takes place in 1811-12 in a frontier settlement in Richland County, Ohio, and is told through the diary of Thomas Keene -- an educated New Englander tormented by his past. The heart of the narrative is Tom's love for Fanny, a young widow, and his obsession with John Chapman, the half-crazed mystic who became known as Johnny Appleseed. Tom is not only a terse, powerful diarist, but also an artist, whose poems and paintings illuminate the text. The journal reveals every aspect of the American pioneering experience, and Tom's own spiritual journey. In the presence of violence and death, struggling with the dark aspects of sex, he saves himself through art and love. ISBN 0-06-015143-9 :