Juniper Tree Burning

Juniper Tree Burning hates her name. It represents everything she despises about her life: her hippie mother Faith who lives by healing herbs and horoscopes; her father Ray a cursing abusive guitar-playing storyteller; her sick little brother Sunny whom she alternately mothers and resents; and the poverty of her isolated New Mexico town. Juniper flees them all to private school in New England to turn herself into someone new: Jennie.She raises herself to be strong and smart: a medical student who hustles a little pool on the side an obsessive runner and a self-proclaimed Ugly Chick With Attitude. Then one night the Seattle Police call. Her brother Sunny has leaped off a ferry and killed himself. And so begins the biggest journey of her life. As Jennie retraces the steps of her brother the same path traveled by generations of her family she confronts the stories they have woven the tapestry of the lives they have built on the coasts and deserts of the West and comes to terms with her past her present and her future.