Strange Birds in the Tree of Heaven: A Novel

Strange Birds in the Tree of Heaven is a book about desire: desire for God, desire for love, desire for the past, and desire for redemption. Ultimately, the choice life or death. Karen McElmurray's brilliant debut novel, set in Mining Hollow in eastern Kentucky, we meet Ruth Blue Wallen; her husband, Earl Wallen; and their son, Andrew. Ruth longs to know God, the only escape she knows in a world that has shown her spiritual, emotional, and sensual defeat. Earl Warren yearns for the music-making of his past, now forgone in order to make a living as a coal miner. Andrew wants the love of his boyhood friend, Henry, and their mutual passion is ultimately fulfilled, an expression of love considered sinful in eastern Kentucky. And, with the divinely inspired yet tormenting help of his mother, in a world of deeply and tragically conflicting desires, Andrew must choose to live or die -- he must choose an uncertain love or nothing at all.