THE GIRL WHO BECAME A TREE

A teen girl grieving her father’s death goes on a surreal journey toward healing in this verse novel.

Since her father died, 14-year-old Daphne spends her afternoons at the library until her mother can pick her up. She keeps everyone at a distance, preferring to lose herself in the world of books in an effort to keep her grief at bay. One day, she loses her phone—precious because it holds the last voicemail her father left her—and is given a cryptic message to “follow the nuts” to find the creature who took it. Thus begins a surrealistic odyssey through a “forest of past memories” wherein Daphne, like the namesake from Greek mythology her tree surgeon father told her about, turns into a tree. Before she can find her way back to humanity, she must confront the pain surrounding her father’s death and its aftermath. The narrative employs various types of poetic forms and perspectives to chart Daphne’s passage, and black-and-white drawings heighten the haunting mood and tension of her emotional voyage. The surreal middle act is bewildering and oblique, an effect that is surely intentional yet at times difficult to follow. The payoff is the emotional closure Daphne experiences by journey’s end. Characters are assumed White.

A brief yet challenging novel in verse that tackles the gnarly, disordered forest of the grieving process.