The Widow Tree
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
In the fall of 1953, three teenagers find a clutch of long-lost Roman coins while clearing vegetables from a government field, and they argue over what to do with this newfound wealth. Nevena insists they should be turned over as they rightfully belong to the country. János wants to keep them. And Dorján walks the line between the two. The decision to conceal their discovery turns disastrous when János disappears.
Dorján and Nevena are left to question everything they believed to be true, while the mother of the missing boy, a widow named Gitta, slowly unravels. Has János used the money to escape the home that stifles him? Or has something much more sinister taken place?
The Widow Tree is a compelling, richly layered story of fatal plans and silent betrayals in a tightly knit village, where the postwar air is simultaneously flush with hope and weighted with suspicion. Amidst an intricate web of cultural tensions, government control, family bonds, and past mistakes, the truth behind many closely guarded secrets is revealed—with life-altering consequences.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
45 C.E.: a doomed Roman soldier conceals his precious savings in a jar in the ground before falling victim to a Pannonian bandit. Almost two millennia pass before the trove is uncovered by three Yugoslavian teens, Nevena, Dorj n, and J nos, in 1953. Nevena, daughter of the local kommandant, believes the treasure should be turned over to the government, but J nos, son of a man victimized by the current regime, sees in the gold a rare chance to escape poverty and social isolation. In the wake of the discovery, J nos vanishes with the gold, leaving his widowed mother and his friends to wonder about his fate; the grim answer to their questions will soon become all too apparent. Lundrigan's (Glass Boys) sketch of a small Balkan village in the years following WWII is a sympathetic but unflinching examination of the troubled heritage of that region. Despite what amounts to a conspiracy of silence amongst the adults, the divisions between the three friends reflect the underlying tensions that shattered Yugoslavia decades later. Horrifying but fascinating, the story is enthralling.
