Book Review and Giveaway: Ilie Ruby’s The Language of Trees

I’m currently reading Ilie Ruby‘s book The Language of Trees after connecting with her on Twitter. I love the power of social media! Her book grabbed me the second I started reading it, and I’m so intrigued by both — Ilie and her first novel.

The Language of Trees is the touching love story of Grant Shongo, a descendant of the Seneca Indians, and Echo O’Connell, who are both returning to their childhood town, Canandaigua, NY. Grant moves back into his family’s lake house after his wife leaves him, and Echo returns to deal with spirits of the past and ends up sharing a secret with her first love, Grant, that will change both of their lives.

This book is so beautifully written and haunting, I can’t put it down. As a writer, I’m so impressed with the way Ilie uses language and how she inserts things like the spirits of trees and hands-on healing and makes it all sound totally believable. There are many well-rounded characters in the book, a half-wolf, a neighbor who makes artful cookies, and many secrets and unexplained things that happened in the past, like the drowning of little Luke many years ago.

Ilie spent summers at Canandaigue Lake and it sounds like such a magical, quaint place. She is a short story writer and painter and lives near Boston with her husband and tree children, who they adopted from Africa. What a wonderful inspiration.

One thing that I’m definitely taking away from the book is how powerful words can be, spoken or unspoken. One sentence said to another person can change that person’s whole life, and we forget that sometimes. Many of the character in this book have to deal with the ramifications of once having said or not having said something that drastically altered someone else’s life.

I hope to meet Ilie in person one day. There is just something really special about her. She is mysterious, creative, and seems so grounded that she is able to write about spirits in trees with an artful ease. I sympathize with her affinity for old things, tradition, and folklore. She is currently working on her second novel and I can’t wait to read it — for several reasons.

I’ll let you know why when I review Ilie’s second novel here :)

Lucky you, Ilie sent me three signed copies of The Language of Trees to give to you! They also include hand-painted bookmarks.

How to enter:

Simply subscribe to Dagmar’s momsense updates (under “Welcome!”) and leave me a comment that you did. (I will never share my readers’ address).

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How to earn extra entries:
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{I received one book for this review but no other compensation. This is as always my heartfelt, honest opinion. This giveaway ends February 20, 2011, at 10:00 pm. The three winners will be chosen by Random.org and have 48 hours to respond to my email. Open to U.S. residents only, sorry. I will personally mail the books to the winners. I’m not responsible for incorrect or incomplete entries.}