About this item
The dangerous and poignant odyssey of a tenacious young girl who boldly traverses the Texas frontier as she seeks to avenge her mother's deathEarly one morning in the remote Hill Country of Texas, a panther attacks a family of homesteaders, mauling a young girl named Samantha and killing her mother, a former slave -- whose final act is to save her daughter's life. Samantha and her half brother, Benjamin, survive, but she is left traumatized, her face horribly scarred.Narrated in Benjamin's beguilingly plainspoken voice, The Which Way Tree is the story of Samantha's relentless determination to stalk and kill the notorious panther and avenge her mother's death. In this quest she and Benjamin, now orphaned, enlist a charismatic Tejano outlaw and a haunted, compassionate preacher with an aging but unstoppable tracking dog.
About the Author
Elizabeth Crook lived in Nacogdoches and then San Marcos, Texas with her parents and brother and sister until age seven when the family moved to Washington D.C., where her father was director of Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) for Lyndon Johnson. Her father was later appointed Ambassador to Australia, and the family moved to Canberra. When they returned to Texas Elizabeth attended public schools in San Marcos, graduating from San Marcos High School. She attended Baylor University for two years and graduated from Rice University in 1982. She has written five novels: The Raven's Bride and Promised Lands, published by Doubleday and reissued by SMU Press as part of the Southwest Life and Letters series; The Night Journal, published by Viking/Penguin; Monday, Monday, published by Sarah Crichton Books, FSG; and The Which Way Tree, to be published by Little, Brown in 2018. Elizabeth has written for periodicals such as Texas Monthly and the Southwestern Historical Quarterly and is a member of Women Writing the West and Western Writers of America. The Night Journal was awarded the 2007 Spur award for Best Long Novel of the West and the 2007 Willa Literary Award for Historical Fiction. Monday, Monday was awarded the 2015 Jesse H. Jones award for fiction. Elizabeth currently lives in Austin with her family. Visit her website at http://www.elizabethcrookbooks.com/
