Divining, a Memoir in Trees
Essays exploring the intimate yet universal intersection of one human life with trees.
A 2024 selection by the Sierra Club, Wisconsin Chapter Book Club
In sixteen essays, each named after a species of tree, Maureen Dunphy explores the nature of human-arboreal relationships, and how each of these trees has--literally--served as a friend, a confidante, or a place to rest. The depth and diversity of these relationships are revealed through essays that are both intimate and universal, moving and informative. While Dunphy's relationships with trees are unique and personal, her work reveals the deep-rooted complexity that connects all of humanity to our staunch, upright companions in life, the members of the "Standing Nation." Beyond providing oxygen, food, and shelter, trees can be sites of emotional refuge, sources of intellectual enrichment, and a boon to physical, mental, and spiritual health.
With essays, such as "Stairway to Heaven: The American Sycamore" and "Rocky Mountain High: The Colorado Pinyon," Dunphy gives readers many ways to reimagine our relationships with nature and self. Within reflections of her personal experience, she skillfully integrates scientific facts to achieve a balance of passion and practicality. While technology, screens, and the stress of the modern world directs our attention elsewhere, Dunphy brings the reader back to the trees right outside our windows.
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Maureen Dunphy is the author of Great Lakes Island Escapes (Wayne State University Press, 2016), which received the 2017 Michigan Notable Book Award, and All About the Great Lakes. She leads writing workshops privately and for Springfed Arts and, through Dunphy Consulting Services, coaches writers and provides professional editing. Dunphy lives in the Detroit metropolitan area.
Dunphy's charming, lyrical ode to her special trees will appeal to readers who enjoy natural-history memoirs, books about trees, and reflections on women's lives and relationships with people, history, current events, and the natural world.
--Sue O'Brien "Library Journal"In Divining, veteran writer Maureen Dunphy brings her carefully honed prose to this personal genre. In sixteen essays, she explores different species of trees that have touched her life, a mixture of botanical information and her personal remembrances. She captures the moment, the short-lived foliage, and the eternal, the deep roots reaching to an ancient past. These narratives--both profoundly personal and enormously universal--are a rich and joyous read.
--Aaron Stander "host, Michigan Writers on the Air, Interlochen Public Radio"
