When the Tree Sings

"Set in an impoverished Greece at the cruel time of the German occupation during WWII, When the Tree Sings is a boy's eye view of war's terrible ways. His parents dead, his paternal home destroyed, the narrator lives with his aged grandmother. With barely enough to survive on, they struggle to avoid death, whether by hunger or violence. In short chapters, the unnamed narrator gives us the life of his village, filled with its vivid characters-the one-eyed companion, the Informer, the idiot, the whore, and more. And the wonder of this novel is how engaging the world is to the boy and, so, to readers, too, who accompany him on his sojourns. James Merrill described When the Tree Sings this way: "A history lovely and appalling as wildflowers from an old battleground.""--