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by Elizabeth A. Tucker (Author)
For fans of Celeste Ng and Dani Shapiro, this lyrical debut set in twentieth-century Northern California offers a multigenerational braided narrative examining the rippling effects of trauma and perceived fault after a loved one's suicide.
1953. WWII veteran Charles Hawkins sweet-talks his daughter, Lyla, into climbing the family's oak tree and hanging the rope for their tire swing. Eager, Lyla crawls along the branch and ties off a bowline, following her father's careful instructions, becoming elated when he playfully tests the rope and declares the knot to be "strong enough to hold the weight of a grown man. Easy." But when her father walks out back one November night and hangs himself from the rope, Lyla becomes haunted by the belief that his death is her fault, a torment amplified by her grief-stricken mother, who sneaks up to the attic and finds comfort in the arms of her dead husband's sweaters, and a formidable grandmother, who seemingly punishes Lyla by locking her outside, leaving her to stare down the enormous tree rooted at the epicenter of her family's loss. Set among the fault-prone landscape of Northern California, The Pale Flesh of Wood is told by three generations of the Hawkins family. Each narrative explores the effects of trauma after the ground shifts beneath their feet and how they must come to terms with their own sense of guilt in order to forgive and carry on.Author Biography
Elizabeth A. Tucker is a fiction writer, poet, playwright, and sixth-generation Californian. Her work can be found in a host of literary journals, including Transfer Magazine, Red River Review, Aroostook Review, Ponder Review, The Bangalore Review, SNReview, and JuxtaProse Magazine. She is a two-time finalist for Glimmer Train's Short Story Award for New Writers, a finalist for the 2020 Craft Elements Fiction Contest, and a finalist for the 2020 Barry Lopez Prize in nonfiction. She lives and writes at 6,600 feet above sea level in the Sierra Nevada with her husband and two children.
