The National Tree Brigade
by Edward Clark
Trade Paper: ISBN: 978-1-59663-551-7 $14.95 SPECIAL PRICE $12.95
Imprint: Sense of Wonder Press  6" x 9", 226pp
 

 One Clueless U.S. President,

                  A Simple Practical Joke,

                                  and, an Army of Chainsaw-Wielding Zealots . . . 

             The National Tree Brigade opens with frustrated advertising account manager John Moreau, reeling in the aftermath of U.S. President Holiday’s public announcement that trees have caused our rampant pollution. With a mind to discover who could possibly believe this—and the determination to show them for the fools they are—Moreau sets up The National Tree Brigade, a fictitious organization that calls on patriots nationwide to get rid of America’s trees. Moreau’s prank spirals out of control when the overwhelming response to the ridiculous mission leads to National Tree Brigade chapters from coast to coast—and forests filled with chainsaw-lugging members with a mission.

            The National Tree Brigade pokes its tongue at political scapegoating and satirizes hypocrisy and lunacy of all sorts. And, in the end, it raises a troubling question: What if we really did believe and act on what comes out of the mouths of politicians?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Edward Clark was born in Tacoma, Washington, but grew up mostly on an Iowa farm, where he learned both the meaning of hard work and that he did not like it. He escaped the farm by attending college, and he escaped college with a journalism degree, which landed him a job as a newspaper reporter. In the decades since, he has moved on to a job even more befitting his opposition to supervised labor—that of a freelance writer, specializing in topics from Chinese studies to food and agriculture to natural history. When not serving his varied clients, he can be found cooking exotic foods in his kitchen, Japanese-influenced gardening in his backyard, or wandering the natural world: backpacking up Sonoran desert canyons, exploring the coastal ranges of Northern California, and canoeing the wild border country of Minnesota and Canada. Clark lives in Minneapolis with wife, the writer Andrea Matthews. While he has been publishing his work in various forms for decades, The National Tree Brigade is his first novel.