This "stunning journey through a country that is home to exhilarating
natural wonders, and a scarring colonial past . . . makes breathtakingly
clear the connection between nature and humanity, and offers a singular
portrait of the complexities inherent to our ideas of identity, family,
and love" (Refinery29).
A chance discovery of letters written by her immigrant grandfather leads
Jessica J. Lee to her ancestral homeland, Taiwan. There, she seeks his
story while growing closer to the land he knew.
Lee hikes mountains home to Formosan flamecrests, birds found nowhere
else on earth, and swims in a lake of drowned cedars. She bikes
flatlands where spoonbills alight by fish farms, and learns about a tree
whose fruit can float in the ocean for years, awaiting landfall.
Throughout, Lee unearths surprising parallels between the natural and
human stories that have shaped her family and their beloved island.
Joyously attentive to the natural world, Lee also turns a critical gaze
upon colonialist explorers who mapped the land and named plants, relying
on and often effacing the labor and knowledge of local communities.
Two Trees Make a Forest is a genre-shattering book encompassing
history, travel, nature, and memoir, an extraordinary narrative showing
how geographical forces are interlaced with our family stories.
