A Crooked Tree
This spur-of-the-moment decision will have far-reaching and devastating consequences not just for 12-year-old Ellen Gallagher but for her four siblings, an unruly family growing up in the mountains of rural Pennsylvania in the 1980s.
Welcome to A Crooked Tree, the rich and atmospheric debut novel from Una Mannion, a writer who was born in Philadelphia but now lives in County Sligo in Ireland, and who thrills us with this resonant, moving and gripping coming-of-age tale set in the days when playtime meant roaming free, and the obsession with technology had not started to erode childhood experience.
Written through the eyes of Ellen’s 15-year-old sister Libby, and with a tenderness and compassion that will take your breath away, this acutely perceptive and haunting story of domestic dysfunction captures all the uncertainty, emotion, frustration and yearnings of adolescence as a group of free-range youngsters are forced to peer into the cruel realities of the adult world.