The novel itself is Crowe's own legacy, her book of days told in journal form, starting with her arrival at the farmhouse and ending with an undated entry Crowe's last communication with the world is a message to her dead lover, Amanda. His manuscript is left unfinished, but the more of it Crowe reads, the more she and her reclusive painter housemate begin to have strange experiences that echo those recorded by the professor.Īnd there's a catch: the book opens with mention of Crowe's unexpected suicide at the end of the summer in question. The manuscript describes unexplained geographical phenomena, failed love affairs, ritual animal sacrifice, mysterious disappearances-unhappy endings of all kinds, made all the more mysterious by the professor's suicide. While exploring the farmhouse, she discovers a basement whose perceived depth doesn't quite correspond to the exacting measurements she takes, and an unfinished manuscript left by the previous tenant, a university professor who describes a series of disturbing incidents dating back through the nineteenth century, centered on a large oak tree at one corner of the property. She is thwarting doctors by smoking and drinking whiskey with her anti-seizure medications and writing extensively of the dreams that terrorize her by night and seep, unwanted, into her waking hours. When Sarah Crowe abruptly relocates to a farmhouse in Rhode Island, she is behind on delivery of her new novel and still reeling from the death of her lover, Amanda. The second time I fell in love with it, and now I'm thinking of buying a backup copy in case my house burns down. I confess: the first time I read this book, I couldn't stand it. 'Truth, if such a thing actually exists, strikes me as a dead end.'-Caitlin R. 'They were always only me, the short stories and novels, only scraps of me coughed up and disguised as fiction, autobiography tarted up and disguised as figment and reverie.'-Sarah Crowe, The Red Tree (p.

The Red Tree by Caitlín R. Kiernan