Pleasing Tree

by Brooke Larson

Nominated for the 2020 Firecracker Award for Creative Nonfiction
&
Nominated for the 2020 Association for Mormon Letters Creative Nonfiction Award

Brooke Larson’s essay collection Pleasing Tree explores the human relationship with the wilderness. Beginning with a Mormon-founded experiment in primitive survival, teenagers hike the Arizona desert while Larson shines light on the effects of prolonged exposure to the outdoors, to lands considered inhospitable to life. Recalling Biblical and religious sojourns, Larson maps her own travels from the desert to Salt Lake City to New York City to Jerusalem, observing the life that curls in a leaf, the bug that spews cinnamon-flavored goo, and the water that occasionally floods the desert. Her essays track the impact the often unnoticed has on the human psyche, discovering the awe upon the recognition that even the desert’s heart beats. This collection crawls with insects, communicative plants, and poetry. It pulses with blood and breath, excrement and the bodies of the living.

Genres: Nature, Essays

152 pages, Paperback

First published February 8, 2019

About the author

Brooke Larson is a writer, collagist, and sometimes wilderness guide. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University, and is finishing a PhD in English at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. A chapbook of her poem-plays, “Origami Drama,” is forthcoming through Quarterly West.

Reviews

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brooke Larson's essay collection, Pleasing Tree, is a work of journeys. Larson opens her collection by narrating a story about her experiences with ANASAZI, a program that seeks to help troubled teens by having them experience (and survive!!) a desert trek. From that first essay, the reader will journey through Larson's various adventures with other landscapes of the natural world, from trying a psychotropic plant in an urban setting to navigating a more "hipster" life in Salt Lake City. A beautiful collection that explores not just the physical fatigue many of us experience in this world, but the spiritual weariness as well.

[Todd Clickner · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was great!
It had the gravitational pull of a black hole and I mean that in the best possible way.
It kept drawing me back to the event horizon every time I put it down.
Also in keeping the black hole comparison going, this book is a bit like a singularity.
It's highly concentrated. Like a single hors d'oeuvre that leaves you completely satiated.
Packed with words, phrases, layers, understanding, accepting, questioning and
experiences. All intertwined through this series of essays.
Highly recommended for anyone who wants a short, yet very fulfilling read.

[Kimberly · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great book of essays--it's well-written, creative, daring, and each takes you on a journey. They vary in length and are occasionally separated by essays that function more like wordplay. Some of them might be considered Travel Essays, but they are always explorative, even when someone might not. Larson writes the unexpected as though it were what you should have expected all this time--as though you should be hugging trees yourself, all the time.

[Sandy Ford · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wanted to both devour and linger over this stunning book. Larson has the tongue of a poet, the eye of a scientist, the mind of a philosopher, and a delightfully strange way of walking through the world.

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

Meditations that blend the poetic and the colloquial, the body and the soul, the self and the world in which the self resides.

[Olesya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Literally one of the best books I ever read; actually the best book I ever read. The way she writes and the words she uses; literally mind blowing 😌💗