Have you ever looked at a tree that is 300 years old and wondered what stories it would tell if it could talk? In Tree Talk, Larry Hawkins spins a surrealistic story in which trees communicate their observations, feelings and opinions as to what harm or good humans may inflict upon nature. The western North Carolina mountains near Highlands, where the author’s great-grandfather, Dr. Alfred Hawkins(1837-1920), moved his family in 1883 from Twinsburg, Ohio, provide the setting for Tree Talk. The conversations posed by the trees are often channeled through the poems written by the author’s great-aunt, Laura Hawkins (1861-1947), granddaughter of Lois Waisbrooker (1826-1909), a published iconoclastic author, feminist, lecturer, and anarchist. Tree Talk loosely follows the life of the Hawkins’ family and concludes in the serene Hidden Falls, visited by few humans, though the path to the falls is revealed in the poem, “The Mountain Pathway”.
