{"id":46957,"date":"2018-06-13T11:20:51","date_gmt":"2018-06-13T17:20:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=46957"},"modified":"2018-06-13T11:21:06","modified_gmt":"2018-06-13T17:21:06","slug":"author-caleb-johnson-signs-his-book-treeborne-in-conversation-with-melissa-booth-hall-at-square-books-friday-june-15-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/author-caleb-johnson-signs-his-book-treeborne-in-conversation-with-melissa-booth-hall-at-square-books-friday-june-15-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"Author Caleb Johnson Signs His Book “Treeborne” (in conversation with Melissa Booth Hall) at Square Books Friday, June 15, 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the tradition of Big Fish and Amanda Coplin’s instant classic, The\u00a0<\/em><\/span>Orchardist<\/em>, comes a debut novel of an unusual family who have made\u00a0<\/span>their home at the margins of an unusual place\u00a0<\/span>Wedged between the bluffs and the river for which it’s named, there\u2019s a\u00a0<\/span>small and all-but-forgotten town. <\/span><\/p>\n

Janie Treeborne lives on an orchard\u00a0<\/span>at the edge of Elberta, Alabama<\/strong>, and in time, she has become its\u00a0<\/span>keeper. A place where conquistadors once walked, and where the\u00a0<\/span>peaches they left behind now grow, Elberta has seen fierce battles,\u00a0<\/span>violent storms, and frantic change\u2014and when the town is once again\u00a0<\/span>threatened from without, Janie realizes it won\u2019t withstand much more.\"\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

So she tells the story of its people: of Hugh, her granddaddy,\u00a0<\/span>determined to preserve Elberta\u2019s legacy through his art; of his wife\u00a0<\/span>Maybelle, who shook the town when she became its first female\u00a0<\/span>postmaster, then again when she died a sudden and mysterious death; of her lover Lee Malone, a\u00a0<\/span>black orchardist and musician harvesting from a land where he is less than welcome; of the local\u00a0<\/span>legend Ricky Birdsong, who scored touchdown after touchdown, only to run headlong into\u00a0<\/span>tragedy; of the time Janie herself kidnapped her own Hollywood-obsessed aunt and tore the\u00a0<\/span>wrong people apart.<\/span><\/p>\n

As the world closes in on Elberta, Alabama\u2014a fictional land equal parts Macon and\u00a0<\/span>Macondo\u2014Caleb Johnson\u2019s debut novel lifts the veil and offers one last glimpse. Treeborne<\/em> is\u00a0<\/span>both a celebration and a reminder: of the difficulty of untangling the past from the future, and of\u00a0<\/span>how home is a story as much as a place.<\/span><\/p>\n

Caleb Johnson grew up in the rural community of Arley, Alabama<\/strong> and graduated from The\u00a0<\/span>University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa<\/strong>. He was awarded a Jentel Writing Residency after he\u00a0<\/span>received his MFA from the University of Wyoming. Caleb has worked as a newspaper reporter,\u00a0<\/span>a janitor, a butcher, and an arts administrator, among other jobs. Currently, he lives in\u00a0<\/span>Philadelphia, where he teaches writing and a class on social justice at a middle school while\u00a0<\/span>working on his next novel.\u00a0\"The<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the tradition of Big Fish and Amanda Coplin’s instant classic, The\u00a0Orchardist, comes a debut novel of an<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":238,"featured_media":47012,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2239],"tags":[283,12789,12785,12790,12791,12788,12786,5,3646,4,1723,12792,7148,6487,12787],"class_list":["post-46957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-literary-events","tag-alabama","tag-amanda-coplin","tag-arley","tag-big-fish","tag-caleb-johnson","tag-elberta","tag-jentel-writing-residency","tag-mississippi","tag-novel","tag-oxford","tag-philadelphia","tag-treeborne","tag-tuscaloosa","tag-university-of-alabama","tag-university-of-wyoming"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/Caleb-Johnson.jpg?fit=871%2C570&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}