Book Synopsis:
When a panther attacks a family of homesteaders in the remote hill country of Texas, it leaves a young girl traumatised and scarred, and her mother dead. Samantha is determined to find and kill the animal and avenge her mother, and her half-brother Benjamin, helpless to make her see sense, joins her quest.
Dragged into the panther hunters’ crusade by the force and purity of Samantha’s desire for revenge are a charismatic outlaw, a haunted, compassionate preacher, and an aged but relentless tracker dog. As the members of this unlikely posse hunt the giant panther, they in turn are pursued by a hapless, sadistic soldier with a score to settle. And Benjamin can only try to protect his sister from her own obsession, and tell her story in his uniquely vivid voice.
The breathtaking saga of a steadfast girl’s revenge against an implacable and unknowable beast, The Which Way Tree is a timeless tale full of warmth and humour, testament to the power of adventure and enduring love.
My Review:
The Which Way Tree is an absorbing action filled adventure filled with courage, the want for revenge and above all love.
Firstly I loved how this story is told in the form of letters from seventeen year old Benjamin to a very patient judge. This helped give the reader an insight into Benjamin’s life and his thoughts about what happened. The author does a great job of giving him a voice so that I really felt I was hearing from a 17 year old from the 19th Century. His descriptions of some of the events made me smile as did his tendency to go off on huge tangents which I could well imagine infuriating the judge.
The author does a great job of setting the scene and I soon felt fully transported to mid 19th Century Texas. It’s a period of history that I didn’t know much about and I found it fascinating to learn more about it. I found it quite shocking to see how people lived, worked and in some cases how they treated each other. The tension between the different groups living in Texas in this period helped add to the tension and sense of unease as the group search for the panther.
Overall I really enjoyed this book and I’ll definitely be recommending it to others. The book starts off with a bit of a bang and I felt like the pace never really slows down as the story continues. Samantha and Benjamin were two lovely characters who I enjoyed following throughout the book. Samantha was a very brave little girl and I was impressed, though slightly scared, with her determination to catch the panther who killed her mum. There always seemed to be something happening which made the book hard to put down and my growing fondness for the siblings meant I wanted to keep reading to find out what would happen to them. The story was quite unpredictable and I wasn’t able to guess which way it was going which I always love. This is the first book I’ve read by this author and I’m now very excited to read more from them in the future.
Huge thanks to Bedford Publishers for inviting me onto the blog tour and for my copy of this book. If you are looking for a slightly different, action packed Western adventure then I highly recommend this one.
About The Author:
Elizabeth Crook lived in Nacogdoches and then San Marcos, Texas with her parents and brother and sister until age seven when the family moved to Washington D.C., where her father was director of Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) for Lyndon Johnson. Her father was later appointed Ambassador to Australia, and the family moved to Canberra. When they returned to Texas Elizabeth attended public schools in San Marcos, graduating from San Marcos High School. She attended Baylor University for two years and graduated from Rice University in 1982. She has written five novels: The Raven’s Bride and Promised Lands, published by Doubleday and reissued by SMU Press as part of the Southwest Life and Letters series; The Night Journal, published by Viking/Penguin; Monday, Monday, published by Sarah Crichton Books, FSG; and The Which Way Tree, to be published by Little, Brown in 2018. Elizabeth has written for periodicals such as Texas Monthly and the Southwestern Historical Quarterly and is a member of Women Writing the West and Western Writers of America. The Night Journal was awarded the 2007 Spur award for Best Long Novel of the West and the 2007 Willa Literary Award for Historical Fiction. Monday, Monday was awarded the 2015 Jesse H. Jones award for fiction.
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