Last night our book club had the unique opportunity to chat with Rachel Keener author of The Killing Tree. We had this opportunity thanks to a contest we won through ReadingGroupGuides.com and we were thrilled. Rachel was very nice and answered all of our questions without hesitation. It was really interesting to hear Rachel explain how she came up with the idea for the book and to hear why she chose to do some things the way she did. It was also great to have her explain why she ended the novel the way she did. I won’t give away the ending, but I will say it is a frustrating ending for some people. She also gave us an idea of what she sees happening to her characters after the end of the novel.
Aside from being able to chat with Rachel, I really enjoyed the novel. It took me away to a place I am very unfamiliar with and I became completely engrossed in it. The language of the novel flowed very well and was extremely readable. I think I finished it in about three days. I was totally wrapped up in Mercy’s struggle to grow into the woman she was meant to be against all odds.
During our chat with Rachel she told us how she wrote The Killing Tree with the encouragement of her husband while she was in law school! She also compared writing The Killing Tree with writing her second novel, The Memory Thief (due out in March 2010). She had a lot of good advice for the aspiring authors in our group.
We had a fabulous time chatting with Rachel and would definitely recommend that anyone given an opportunity like this one take it.
