Juniper Tree Burning Author:Goldberry Long Jennifer Braverman was once named Juniper Tree Burning, and she hates that name. It represents the childhood she escaped: her hippie mother, Faith, caught up in mind-altering salvation; her well-meaning father, Ray, interchanging kiss and slap, and her sickly little brother, Sunny Boy Blue, whom she could not save. Jennie, now a successful adult... more », newly married to a seemingly perfect man, Christian Braverman, is a strong, fiercely intelligent woman. She has left Juniper Tree Burning behind.
All of this changes when she learns of Sunny's suicide. Whether an act of despair or revenge, her brother's final message sends Jennie running from her husband. Part love story, part family saga, and part road trip, Juniper Tree Burning is the story of Jennie's mad dash across the mountains and plains of the American West, toward the site of Sunny's death.
As she flees her husband, Jennie must confront the childhood she thought she had escaped, with its tapestry of family sorrows -- the grinding poverty, the spider-infested adobe house, and her hippie parents, who relied on their own wounded, wayward hearts to navigate the chaotic Sixties, when people moved to isolated villages in northern New Mexico and raised their children outside the bounds of tradition.
For Jennie, escape has always come at the expense of those who love her: the brilliant, needy brother she left behind, and now, her sure-hearted husband, Chris. But this time, Jennie can't escape the dirty little hippie girl she once was -- Juniper Tree Burning -- and all the shame and sorrow that comes with her. Nor can Jennie escape her own greatest challenge: accepting love.
Moving seamlessly between past and present, blending elements of myth, metaphor, and post-modernism, Goldberry Long creates a dazzling meditation on legacy and legend, rebellion and renewal. It is a fearless novel about the "flower children's children," a clear-eyed exploration of what the Great Experiment has wrought for the next generation. This debut novel is a passionate and dynamic tour de force, marking the introduction of a voice for a disenfranchised generation.« less