Author Description

I was twenty-seven years old and I had lost my way. I found myself driving on an unlit highway through the middle of a black summer it wasn't where I'd intended to be." In his second novel, Why the Tree Loves the Ax, Jim Lewis uses the conventions of the mystery to explore the space between what is lost and what is found. When a car accident brings Caroline Harrison to Sugartown, Texas, she is running from her past, but what she finds are the kind of secrets that simmer beneath the surface of small-town America. At first Sugartown seems like a good place to settle, and Caroline finds a home, a job, and a new, anonymous existence. Eventually, however, the creepy sense of foreboding Lewis has skillfully built in early chapters explodes in violence and Caroline is driven out of Sugartown, fleeing first to New York City and finally to upstate New York for the novel's disturbing denouement. Why the Tree Loves the Ax is a suspense novel at heart, but when it moves toward its climax, the reader is left with the uncomfortable realization that Lewis has deftly deconstructed our notions of Caroline's role as narrator. As events unfold, it becomes clear that her past and her motives are as mysterious as those of any other character, and that the conundrums this mystery seeks to unravel are those of the soul. Lewis wraps his plot in layers of intensely poetic language--a technique that is challenging at first, but ultimately rewarding. Characters seem to exist behind a mist of imagery that keeps us at arm's length, creating a dreamily menacing atmosphere that will linger long after the final page has been turned.