Waiting on Wednesday - The Language of Trees; Ilie Ruby

Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, by Jill at Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating. Here's my pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection:

The Language of Trees; Ilie Ruby

(July 2010 - Avon)

“The Language of Trees, like Whitman's Leaves of Grass though in a magic realist vernacular, refreshingly asserts that deeply American conviction: the gravest natural instinct is to heal and be healed. A shimmeringly heart-felt story.”

–Gregory Maguire, author of the Wicked series

"Rarely do debut novels cover the complicated emotional terrain of The Language of Trees.  This is no simple right-of-passage story but rather an eloquently written journey that explores our strengths and vulnerabilities, our love of those who most need us, and whom we need most.  Ilie Ruby is a shining new voice, powerful and true, worthy of our closest attention."
–James Brown, author of The Los Angeles Diaries

"The Language of Trees is a haunting novel about the enduring power of love.  Crafted with suspenseful pacing and delicate imagery, Ilie Ruby's book combines the qualities of an irresistible ghost story with a healing tale of redemption.  It's a vivid and compelling read."
–Elizabeth Rosner, author of Blue Nude and The Speed of Light

“Ilie Ruby's haunting story seems to spring fully formed from the mystical setting she so beautifully describes. The Language of Trees will make you believe that spirits live on, that hands can heal, and that if you open your heart wide enough, the world is full of second chances.”
–Diane Chamberlain

"Eloquent and compelling, The Language of Trees is a luminous gem in the hypnotic waters of seduction. Ilie Ruby's prose has at once a deeply lush and evocative serenity, poetically imagistic and rhythmically mastered, even as it lures us up into the lilac scents of restless spirits or down into the nuanced depths of a child's catatonic paralysis. Ruby is master of her subject. Her characters are empathetic portraits of everyone or everything "wounded," a mythic world of Seneca tribal legend, blind faith, and the sobering mania of guilt, all intimately woven by the haunt of memory and mourning-- and finally love. Ruby inspires us to leap every hurdle of "risk" and "Reach, Reach" into the open core of our souls for ancestral and personal redemption. A remarkable debut author, hers is the language of the human spirit working in conjunction with the healing spirit of the earth." 

–James Ragan, author of Too Long A Solitude  and The Hunger Wall