Botanica is an island, but almost all of the island is taken up by the Tree.
Little knowing how they came to be here, small communities live around the coast line. The Tree provides them shelter, kindling, medicine – and a place of legends, for there are ghosts within the trees who snatch children and the dying.
Lillah has come of age and is now ready to leave her community and walk the tree for five years, learning all Botanica has to teach her. Before setting off, Lillah is asked by the dying mother of a young boy to take him with her. In a country where a plague killed half the population, Morace will otherwise be killed in case he has the same disease. But can Lillah keep the boy’s secret, or will she have to resort to breaking the oldest taboo on Botanica?
Another astonishingly imaginative novel from the acclaimed author of Slights.
Kaaron Warren is an Australian author of horror, science fiction, and fantasy short stories and novels. She is the author of the short story collection The Grinding House, which won the 2006 ACT Writing and Publishing Awards. Her short stories have won both the Ditmar and Aurealis Award.
