About the Book

Book: The Burning Tree

Author: Helen Dent

Genre: YA Fantasy

Release Date: September 10, 2024

There’s a secret growing in the woods.

In Ellie Caster’s town of Bishop’s Gap, the Casters and the powerful Levy family have been feuding for generations. The families share just one thing in common—they both dread the mark, a scorch that appears at random on their doors, bringing a curse from the Burning Tree. When the mark hits Ellie’s door, her sister Jean falls into a coma. Ellie knows the Burning Tree is to blame, and desperate to save her sister, she braves the forbidden woods to confront it. But this choice ignites a chain of unintended consequences, forcing her to work with her nemesis, Charlotte Levy.

Together, they must complete an impossible task, uncover the ancient secret of Bishop’s Gap, and end the curse before time runs out for their entire town.

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About the Author

Helen Dent’s career as a writer began at age nine, when her grandfather paid her a dollar a page for what turned into quite a lengthy story. She studied monster theory (among other things) in graduate school, taught English at a Chinese university, and toured the Scottish Hebrides in a car with a needy radiator. Now she lives in Texas with her husband, kids, a cat, and a hamster. She belongs to the DFW Writers Workshop, the Fort Worth Poetry Society, and Art House Dallas.

More from Helen

“‘Oh, Trees, Trees, Trees,’ said Lucy (though she had not been intending to speak at all). ‘Oh, Trees, wake, wake, wake.’

. . .

Though there was not a breath of wind they all stirred about her. The rustling noise of the leaves was almost like words.” - C.S. Lewis, Prince Caspian

This scene of the enchanted trees in C.S. Lewis’s Narnia sparked my imagination the very first time I read it. As a child, like Lucy, I could picture how the trees in my own backyard might look as wood-people, what they might say if they spoke. Even now, when I walk through woods, they still hold an enchanted quality for me. I want to follow all the footpaths . . . to a meadow, maybe, rich in wildflowers . . . or a haunt of bats . . . or an ancient, lightning-struck tree.

There’s a particular wood near my house that I walked week by week during a difficult season in my life. Flowers bloomed, birds nested. The light changed. Leaves fell, then budded again. It was a comfort to wander under the sheltering trees – and that comfort wasn’t just the peace of being out in nature.

Each rustle of the trees carried an echo of a much greater story.

It’s always struck me as particularly beautiful that there are individual trees at the beginning and end of the Bible: the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in Genesis, and then the tree of life again in Revelation, this time described as having “twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations” (Revelation 22: 2b ESV).

So every walk in the woods reminds me that brokenness isn’t the end of the story. Death isn’t the end of the story.

It’s probably no surprise, then, that I set my book, The Burning Tree, in an enchanted forest. where the trees have been twisted into something destructive, but where there’s always the possibility of a different outcome . . . just waiting to be unlocked.

Author Interview

Can you tell us a little bit about what readers can expect from your books?

My books all have a mystery of some kind at their center. They often include a touch of myth or enchantment as well, though they’re set in this world, modern-day.

What is the greatest advice you have ever been given about writing?

The greatest advice I’ve received is to just sit down and write, whether I’m feeling particularly inspired that day or not. I think it was Jonathan Rogers of The Habit who made this point. And that’s been really helpful for me because there can be an expectation that writing always has to be an amazing experience, a blaze of creativity, or it’s not going to be any good. But I’ve found, as Rogers says, that it’s actually the other way around — sitting down and doing the work makes space for inspiration to happen. And that takes the pressure off.

Can you share 5 random facts about this book?

Of all my books, The Burning Tree was the fastest to plan (I outlined the basic plot in under an hour), and took the longest to complete (4 years).
The setting was inspired by a “blink and you miss it” town on a road trip.
There’s a lot of food in this book, and I love most of it . . . except what one particular character eats. I’ll leave it up to readers to decide who that might be!
The book draws on the mythology of the country from which my great-grandfather immigrated over a hundred years ago.
At the end of The Burning Tree, my main character is given three books. These are some of the books and authors that most significantly influenced me as a writer.

Can you share something interesting or surprising you learned while researching for the book?

Yes, I did a lot of research into ash trees in the process of writing this book, and I discovered that they’re one of the last trees to bud in the spring, so they allow sunlight to reach the undergrowth of a forest. This is fortunate, because they reach the height of a nine-story building. They also feature prominently in several different mythologies.

Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions. Before you go, where can readers keep up with what’s next?

Thanks so much for having me! Readers can find out more at helendentwrites.com, and also on Instagram, where I’m @helendentwrites.