Trees

by Sam Smith

Hazel, is going to die. But when? After the steroid treatments that make her into a slip-slopping bag of water? Or after discovering that her biological father is the millionaire Gustaf Eriksson, a man obsessed with the reforesting of England? Or will it be when her mother gives up her café and herself becomes involved with The Tree Prospectus? Gustaf Eriksson made his reforesting fortune as a pop-music promoter, now in his tree-planting retirement he writes and occasionally performs haiku with one of his old bands. Or could this be a 17 syllable red herring? Or will Hazel die after she leaves her sedentary game-playing boyfriend and moves in with her mother? Her mother who has also recently separated from her accountant husband. Who has even more recently got himself killed driving his car into a tree, a Scots Pine. The Scots Pine was innocent. The trees, Alder through to Yew, will not be put on trial here. But we will meet the mother’s café staff and customers, as well as the woodland volunteer workers trying to save the planet along with Tree Prospectus’s two mainstay eco-hippies, Dez and Jay. While in the background is the threat of Gustaf Eriksson’s son, a reputedly violent homosexual. Will the two massive horses offer these tree people any protection? Or will the mother’s own sexual history, strange as it is, lead to a friendship that will in the end sustain The Tree Prospectus?

304 pages, Paperback

Published March 4, 2020

About the author

Until recently Sam was editor of The Journal (once 'of Contemporary Anglo-Scandinavian Poetry.') A magazine that he kept going for nigh on 30 years.
He now lives in Blaengarw, South Wales. He has been a psychiatric nurse, residential social worker, milkman, plumber, laboratory analyst, groundsman, sailor, computer operator, scaffolder, gardener, painter & decorator........ working at anything which paid the rent, enabled him to raise his three daughters, and which didn't get too much in the way of his writing. Indie publishers have come and gone, nevertheless a few poetry collections and several of his novels remain in print.