"You are funny, Sapling."
"Why do you still call me that?" he asked.
She smiled mischievously. "Because it's what you are. It's what you were when I first met you and you still are. You're green inside. Fresh and young. Unbent and unformed. My tree has stood for a century and more. It could live another hundred with care. You are like a newborn lamb to the old shepherd".
The Promise Tree by Elisabeth J. Hobbes is an inspired blend of historical romance and fantasy.
Blurb:
When does a story begin?
For Edwin Hope, it begins with a childhood dare and a forbidden tree. It begins with him falling... in more ways than one.
Called home from his studies by the grandfather who has always hated him, eighteen-year-old Edwin is once again trapped in a house that is colder than the winds whipping across the fields. Seeking sanctuary, he escapes into the untamed beauty of the Peaks and meets a woman who sparks an old memory. A memory of the sycamore that broke him, and the little girl who saved him.
Drusilla has had many acolytes over the centuries but none like Edwin. With the Great War looming and Edwin's future uncertain, she knows the right thing to do is to set him free from her spell, but can she do so if it means breaking her own heart?
1902.
One day a little boy named Edwin climbs up a sycamore tree on a dare, and stumbles upon a mysterious girl among the tree branches. He is rather clumsy, and falls from the tree, only to have his arm broken.
Edwin is a lonely child, an orphan growing up in the house of his grandfather Stephen Brice, who seems to detest his very existence. Unloved and uncared for, he seeks the company of the girl on the tree. For his disobedience, Edwin is packed off to live with his aunt and her family.
Once he is eighteen, Edwin is called back by his domineering grandfather to learn the ropes of the business he's going to inherit one day. The grandfather is as unloving and stern as Edwin remembers him to be.
The house feels like a prison, and to escape its constaints, Edwin goes back to the sycamore tree, on an impulse. There he meets a young woman, and the memories of the chance encounter all those years ago rush back. She claims again to be the goddess of the tree, and the whole grove.
Edwin is not a baby anymore, and doesn't believe in the faerie world, yet he is eager to humour the beautiful stranger. "She was an odd thing but her eccentricity was appealing. If she wanted to play at being a goddess then who was he to object?"
And thus the strange friendship/infatuation begins. Edwin brings little gifts to Drusilla. At first she asks what he wants in retrun. "Nothing. That's the thing about gifts. They aren't in exchange for anything nor do they come with conditions". Yet he is not quite honest with himself, as he is drawn to Drusilla. She intrigues and excites him, and there's another appeal in their relationship, as Edwin knows it would mightily annoy his grandfather that he meets up with someone of unknown origins.
When Edwin enlists and is called to fight in France, his future is more than uncertain. Hardship and war horros are all around him. Will the love of the tree dryad sustain him and protect from death? Will the magic sycamore bring him safely home?
Drusilla's calling herself a tree goddess, and there is a hint of a story about her origins and how she has come to be who she is. Is she one with nature, or the nature itself?! Being confined to a limited location, she is not aware of the political or economical undercurrents in the wider world. She wants to preserve her little piece of the world, but is it even possible to keep it intact, when the world around is crashing down?!
And there's Edwin, we watch him growing from an innocent vulnerable child to a young man, who is changed by the hard reality of the war. Edwin struggles to understand what he wants in life after his return home from the battlefrields of France. He is embittered that the whole generation of young men from his area is lost. Only two men survive from his own battaglion.
He also keeps trying to find any semblance of connection to his grandfather.
Though the grandfather is not a likeable character, he's not a one-dimensional villain. Mr Brice is grieving the loss of his daughter, but like many men of his generation he keeps the stiff upper lip, and is hiding his emotions behind the stern facade. What in his eyes is a self-restraint becomes a cruelty towards a young child who has also lost his mother. Rather than be united in grief and memories, the old man chooses to be an unemotional stoic.
The Promise Tree is an unusual book. It's an amalgam of historical fiction and ecological fantasy. Told in a lyrical prose, The Promise Tree is a mythical, otherwordly story that feels timeless. A story of love and hope, of metamorphosis and renewal, both of nature and human beings.
The descriptions of nature and the circle of life are beautifully rendered, as opposed to the ugliness and brutality of war.
This post is part of the blog tour for The Promise Tree.
Many thanks to Elisabeth J. Hobbes and Rachel's Random Resources for my e-copy of the book!
Author Bio – Elisabeth’s writing career began in 2013 when she entered
Harlequin's So You Think You Can Write contest and it turned out she could. She
writes romantic Historical fiction as Elisabeth Hobbes and Historical
folklore/fantasy inspired romance as Elisabeth J. Hobbes.
She teaches Primary school but would rather write
full time because unlike five year olds her characters generally do what she
tells them. She spends most of her spare time reading and is a pro at cooking
one-handed while holding a book.
She lives in Cheshire because the car broke down
there in 1999 and she never left. Elisabeth has two almost grown kids, two
cats, two dogs and a husband. The whole family are on the autistic spectrum and
that probably includes the pets! She dreams of having a tidy house one day.
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