Warm, imaginative, and thoroughly original, this unusual book intertwines the mysteries of trees with the defining moments of life. For Theresa Kishkan, trees are memory markers of life, and in Mnemonic, she explores the presence of trees in nature, in culture, and in her personal history.

Naming each chapter for a particular tree -- the Garry oak, the Ponderosa pine, the silver olive, the plane tree, the arbutus, and others -- she draws on Pliny the Elder's Natural History, John Evelyn's Sylva, and strands of mythology from other sources to blend scientific fact with natural history and the artifacts of human culture. In the words of Pliny the Elder, "Hence it is right to follow the natural order, to speak about trees before other things . . . "