Why Did God Make the Tree?: A Patrick Denny Novel
"A mystifying but endlessly absorbing tale blending surreality and issues of mental health . . . surprisingly cohesive, thanks in large part to the author's deliberate pacing and unambiguous transitions." - Kirkus Reviews
Something isn't quite right in Waylingbrooke, New Hampshire. Beneath the shadow of the town's red brick watch tower, horror novelist Dr. Patrick Denny has returned to his long-abandoned profession of psychiatry. Years spent writing about the darkness within the human mind brought him no closer to understanding it. Now he seeks in his patients what eluded him in his fiction and finds himself compelled by three disturbing cases: an insomniac haunted by her parents' deaths; a young man who believes he's trapped inside one of Patrick's horror stories; and a catatonic woman lost in the dark forest of her psyche.
In his attempt to untangle the mysteries of their troubled minds, Patrick finds that his own tormented past begins to bleed into his present, and the macabre storyteller that still dwells within him threatens to emerge. As stories birth stories and reality loses its edges, Patrick must question whether his return to psychiatry offers enlightenment or signals his final descent into madness.
Why Did God Make the Tree? is a haunting exploration of consciousness in the tradition of Victorian and Modernist Gothic fiction. The novel weaves together psychology and superstition, reality and fantasy as the boundaries between stories within stories dissolve, unfolding as a triptych of tales - The Tower, The Monster, and The Tree. Gregg's evocative debut rewards patient readers with its layered complexity and dreamlike psychological depth and challenges assumptions about sanity, reality, and the human need for narrative.
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