Summary and Reviews of Treeborne by Caleb Johnson

Media Reviews

Southern Living (Best New Books Coming Out This Summer) A story about complicated legacies and the people who bring to life the places we call home.

Booklist Starred Review. Majestic in scope, jam-packed with revelations and a touch of the fantastical, Treeborne is an enthralling story about what binds people together and breaks them apart.

Library Journal Starred Review. Johnson's gem of a novel tells of a place and its people so vivid and real that readers won't want their stories to end.

Publishers Weekly Starred Review. Sentence by loamy sentence, this gifted author digs up corpses and upends trees to create a place laden with magic and memory.

Kirkus Reviews A lyrical effusion deeply rooted in place and steeped in quirky characters.

 Alyson Hagy, author of Boleto

Every now and again a powerful new voice bursts into song and begins to sing stories we can't do without. Caleb Johnson's is such a voice. The characters and desires of Treeborne will wrap themselves around you tighter than any wild vine. And the setting of Elberta, Alabama will call out to you like a long-lost home. This novel is a gripping, entrancing debut by one whirlwind of a writer.

 Brad Watson, author of Miss Jane Caleb Johnson is as much a prophet of his place and time as was Larry Brown of north Mississippi, as Cormac McCarthy of his native Knoxville, Tennessee, Marquez of his homegrown, fictional Macondo. He is 'Treeborne.' This is a novel born of a deep, affectionate, and wise knowledge of a place and its people, its history, and its rich and complicated wildness. And its innate tendency to recognize and heighten the mysterious and strange in the ordinary, everyday. He manipulates and maneuvers narrative masterfully.

 Dana Spiotta, author of Innocents and Others and Stone Arabia Treeborne is a remarkable first novel: poetic, funny, and populated by particular, fully alive characters. Caleb Johnson has a wonderful ear for the rhythm and diction of Southern voices. He knows how to light on just the right detail of place, time and person. Watching how the intertwined interests of the land, of the past, and of a family play out makes the novel compelling from start to finish.

 Daniel Wallace, national bestselling author of Extraordinary Adventures and Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions I can't remember the last time I read a book I wish so much I'd written. Treeborne is beautiful, and mythic in ways I would never have been able to imagine...I can't say enough about this book.

 Daren Wang, author of The Hidden Light of Northern Fires Caleb Johnson's writing makes you yearn for a place that never was. Elberta, Alabama is so vivid, so alive, you can smell the peaches ripening in the orchard.

 Jill McCorkle, New York Times bestselling author of Life After Life In Treeborne, Caleb Johnson spins an artful, intricate web of a place - its rich history and memorable characters caught and held there by stories told and secrets withheld. Suspenseful and immensely satisfying.

 Laird Hunt, author of Neverhome What a marvel of a novel this is. Treeborne's sentences are taut, its situations engrossing, its characters absolutely and indelibly engaging. Caleb Johnson's debut is a deep-dig, history-rich, story-soaked beauty.

 Rick Bragg, New York Times bestselling author of My Southern Journey and All Over but the Shoutin' This boy cannot only write with beauty about how things are in the Deep South, he can write with an eerie feel for the way they used to be. I've heard a lot of great old editors say that you can't teach writing, that it's born. Caleb Johnson can make you believe it.

Reader Reviews

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