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Book Reviewed by:When you climb a tree, the first thing you do is to hold on tight.
Thirty-four-year-old Harry Crane works as an analyst for the US Forest Service. When his wife dies suddenly, he is unable to cope. Leaving his job and his old life behind, Harry makes his way to the remote woods of northeastern Pennsylvania's Endless Mountains, determined to lose himself. But fate intervenes in the form of a fiercely determined young girl named Oriana. She and her mother, Amanda, are struggling to pick up the pieces from their own tragedy - Amanda stoically holding it together while Oriana roams the forest searching for answers. And in Oriana's magical, willful mind, she believes that Harry is the key to righting her world.
Now it's time for Harry to let go…
After taking up residence in the woods behind Amanda's house, Harry reluctantly agrees to help Oriana in a ludicrous scheme to escape his tragic past. In so doing, the unlikeliest of elements - a wolf, a stash of gold coins, a fairy tale called The Grum's Ledger and a wise old librarian named Olive - come together to create a golden adventure that will fulfill Oriana's wildest dreams and open Harry's heart to a whole new life.
Harry's Trees is an uplifting story about the redeeming power of friendship and love and the magic to be found in life's most surprising adventures.
Harry's Trees is the best kind of feel-good novel - one that gives readers glimpses into magic and hope and happy endings but doesn't lose sight of the fact that its characters should feel like real people leading real lives colored by loss and confusion and mortgage payments. Cohen's novel is in many ways about generosity, but it's also generous in its telling, as it allows each character's story to take root and spring to life, building a narrative as rich and interwoven as the forests Harry loves...continued
Full Review
(622 words)
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(Reviewed by Norah Piehl).
Unlike Harry in Jon Cohen's Harry's Trees, readers can't stay in the fictional tree house built by Amanda Jeffers's late husband, but there are plenty of other wildly inventive and beautiful tree houses around the world that people can visit, explore - and even sleep in! Here are just a few:
Just 20 miles outside Seattle, in Fall City, Washington, is Treehouse Point, an eco-resort with a mini-village of six unique tree houses deep in the forests of the Pacific Northwest. The resort's owner is a tree house consultant who also teaches courses on how to build them.
The TreeHotel in Sweden takes a modern approach to tree house construction, with tree houses that resemble a mirrored cube, a floating box, a bird'...
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If you liked Harry's Trees, try these:
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"The best novel ever written about trees, and really just one of the best novels, period."
—Ann Patchett
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