Burning Tree

About the Book

Book: The Burning Tree

Author: Helen Dent

Genre: YA Fantasy

Release Date: September 10, 2024

There’s a secret growing in the woods.

In Ellie Caster’s town of Bishop’s Gap, the Casters and the powerful Levy family have been feuding for generations. The families share just one thing in common—they both dread the mark, a scorch that appears at random on their doors, bringing a curse from the Burning Tree. When the mark hits Ellie’s door, her sister Jean falls into a coma. Ellie knows the Burning Tree is to blame, and desperate to save her sister, she braves the forbidden woods to confront it. But this choice ignites a chain of unintended consequences, forcing her to work with her nemesis, Charlotte Levy.

Together, they must complete an impossible task, uncover the ancient secret of Bishop’s Gap, and end the curse before time runs out for their entire town.

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My Thoughts:

I REALLY enjoyed this one. It was different with a unique storyline, interesting characters, and a strong theme. I was never sure what was going to happen next or how the plot would wrap up. It kept me turning the pages to find out. I'm not sure if it is classified as young adult, but I would definitely recommend it for young readers. I think my teenagers would enjoy it. And I look forward to reading more by this author.

About the Author

Helen Dent’s career as a writer began at age nine, when her grandfather paid her a dollar a page for what turned into quite a lengthy story. She studied monster theory (among other things) in graduate school, taught English at a Chinese university, and toured the Scottish Hebrides in a car with a needy radiator. Now she lives in Texas with her husband, kids, a cat, and a hamster. She belongs to the DFW Writers Workshop, the Fort Worth Poetry Society, and Art House Dallas.

More from Helen

“‘Oh, Trees, Trees, Trees,’ said Lucy (though she had not been intending to speak at all). ‘Oh, Trees, wake, wake, wake.’

. . .

Though there was not a breath of wind they all stirred about her. The rustling noise of the leaves was almost like words.” - C.S. Lewis, Prince Caspian

This scene of the enchanted trees in C.S. Lewis’s Narnia sparked my imagination the very first time I read it. As a child, like Lucy, I could picture how the trees in my own backyard might look as wood-people, what they might say if they spoke. Even now, when I walk through woods, they still hold an enchanted quality for me. I want to follow all the footpaths . . . to a meadow, maybe, rich in wildflowers . . . or a haunt of bats . . . or an ancient, lightning-struck tree.

There’s a particular wood near my house that I walked week by week during a difficult season in my life. Flowers bloomed, birds nested. The light changed. Leaves fell, then budded again. It was a comfort to wander under the sheltering trees – and that comfort wasn’t just the peace of being out in nature.

Each rustle of the trees carried an echo of a much greater story.

It’s always struck me as particularly beautiful that there are individual trees at the beginning and end of the Bible: the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in Genesis, and then the tree of life again in Revelation, this time described as having “twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations” (Revelation 22: 2b ESV).

So every walk in the woods reminds me that brokenness isn’t the end of the story. Death isn’t the end of the story.

It’s probably no surprise, then, that I set my book, The Burning Tree, in an enchanted forest. where the trees have been twisted into something destructive, but where there’s always the possibility of a different outcome . . . just waiting to be unlocked.