Trees Call for What They Need

by Melissa Kwasny

Nettie, an elderly woman living in a small town in Indiana, recalls her friend Till, a professional medium who encouraged Nettie's daughter and granddaughter to enter the same field, Marie, an independent Polish immigrant, Art, a spiritual healer of animals, and the other people in her long life

Genres: Fiction

249 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1993

About the author

Melissa Kwasny is the author of the acclaimed poetry collections The Nine Senses, Reading Novalis in Montana, The Archival Birds, and Thistle, which won the Idaho Prize in 2006. She is also the author of Pictograph: Poems, published in 2015.

Kwasny is the recipient of the Poetry Society of America's 2009 Cecil Hemley Award, as well as the 2009 Alice Fay di Castognola Award for a work in progress, the Montana Art Council's 2010 Artist's Innovation Award, and residencies at Vermont Studio Center, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Hedgebrook, and the Headlands Center for the Arts. She has taught as Visiting Writer at both the undergraduate and graduate level, including at the University of Wyoming, Eastern Washington University/Inland Pacific Center for Writers, and as the Richard Hugo Visiting Poet at the University of Montana. Relevant to her teaching for Lesley University, which she has done since 1999, she was a poet in the schools in grades K-12 public schools, mostly in the San Francisco Bay Area for nine years.

Kwasny was born in Indiana and earned an MFA from the University of Montana. She lives outside of Jefferson City, Montana, in the Elkhorn Mountains.

Reviews

[ally · Rating 4 out of 5]

“She says she wants to write a book about me. I can’t think of anybody wanting to read a book with no plot but living, no adventure past growing food and cooking it, building a home and keeping it warm, overcoming grief, burying the dead, keeping a family together. And friends. ‘Friends was my adventure,’ I tell her.”

🥹💐😭 a beautiful testament of love and womanhood and spirituality and friendship. I love a book that spans many years and generations 👩‍🍳💋

[Mary Kay · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderful, pastoral story that I enjoyed because I've seen the truth in this fiction. I was given this book by a remarkable friend, and it remains a pure gift of love.