"I can’t remember the last time I read a book I wish so much I’d written. Treeborne is beautiful, and mythic in ways I would never have been able to imagine...I can’t say enough about this book."―Daniel Wallace, national bestselling author of Extraordinary Adventures and Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions
"Using language rich as mulch, debut author Johnson tells the superb saga of three generations of Treebornes... Sentence by loamy sentence, this gifted author digs up corpses and upends trees to create a place laden with magic and memory."—Publishers Weekly, starred review and editor's pick
Honorable Mention for the 2019 Southern Book Prize
Longlisted for The Crook’s Corner Book Prize
One of Southern Living's Best New Books Coming Out Summer 2018
One of Amazon's Best Books of the Month (June): Literature & Fiction
One of The Philadelphia Inquirer's Recommended Books of Summer 2018
One of Library Journal’s Books to Get Now
One of Deep South Magazine's Recommended Books of Summer 2018
Get a copy from Bookshop, an organization that supports independent bookstores!
Janie Treeborne lives on an orchard at the edge of Elberta, Alabama, and in time, she has become its keeper. A place where conquistadors once walked, and where the peaches they left behind now grow, Elberta has seen fierce battles, violent storms, and frantic change―and when the town is once again threatened from without, Janie realizes it won’t withstand much more. So she tells the story of its people: of Hugh, her granddaddy, determined to preserve Elberta’s legacy at any cost; of his wife, Maybelle, the postmaster, whose sudden death throws the town into chaos; of her lover, Lee Malone, a black orchardist harvesting from a land where he is less than welcome; of the time when Janie kidnapped her own Hollywood-obsessed aunt and tore the wrong people apart.
As the world closes in on Elberta, Caleb Johnson’s debut novel lifts the veil and offers one last glimpse. Treeborne is a celebration and a reminder: of how the past gets mixed up in thoughts of the future; of how home is a story as much as a place.