Here are 100 books that Grafted Tree fans have personally recommended if you like
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I am the keeper of the family stories, letters, photos, terrible telegrams, and diaries. What began as genealogy and chasing ancestors became a desire to learn the personal stories behind the names and dates, what their lives were like, and what character traits I may have inherited from them.
I love this poetic chronicle of three generations of an Iowa farm family, making a go of it for 125 years on the same farm, dating from the great-grandfather, a Civil War veteran, arriving for the first time on a newly-purchased farm.
The lives of these folks and their neighbors were shaped by two world wars and the Great Depression, thriving through faith, love, self-reliance, and community.
The Horse Lawyer and Other Poems chronicles the struggles and triumphs of three generations of an Iowa farm family over a 125-year period. The "story" begins with a soldier coming home from the Civil War and setting foot for the first time on his newly-purchased farm and ends when the land next changes hands in the early 1990s. The book is the story of the family, their friends, and their neighbors as they try to adapt to the changing world around them. Their lives and personal aspirations are shaped by two world wars, a harsh climate, the dust bowl, and…
The Victorian mansion, Evenmere, is the mechanism that runs the universe.
The lamps must be lit, or the stars die. The clocks must be wound, or Time ceases. The Balance between Order and Chaos must be preserved, or Existence crumbles.
Appointed the Steward of Evenmere, Carter Anderson must learn the…
I am the keeper of the family stories, letters, photos, terrible telegrams, and diaries. What began as genealogy and chasing ancestors became a desire to learn the personal stories behind the names and dates, what their lives were like, and what character traits I may have inherited from them.
This was my first eye-opening introduction to family history imaginatively shared through lyric poetry, prose poetry, and flash prose.
Stories of women and men from Michigan to Illinois to the Netherlands, women dealing with infant mortality, vanity, housewife skills, divorce and other hidden stories, even a brave heroine saving a family's home.
Eric Hoffer Award Finalist Kin Types is a collection of lyric poetry, prose poetry, and flash prose that imaginatively retells the lives of private individuals from previous generations. Using family history research, the writer has reconstructed the stories of women and men from Michigan to Illinois to the Netherlands. Read together, the pieces create a history of women dealing with infant mortality, vanity, housewife skills, divorce, secret abortion, the artist versus mother dilemma, mysterious death, wife beating, and a brave heroine saving a family's home.
I am the keeper of the family stories, letters, photos, terrible telegrams, and diaries. What began as genealogy and chasing ancestors became a desire to learn the personal stories behind the names and dates, what their lives were like, and what character traits I may have inherited from them.
I found this collection of missing family members a beautiful remembrance through winsome details and photographs.
An especially dear one called “To Write a Sermon” shows the author as a two-year-old with pencil and paper sitting next to her pastor father smoking a pipe and working on a sermon.
When a loved one dies, the family will often turn to the photograph albums as an act of solace, to keep their loved one with them just a little while longer. Grief Songs: Poems of Love & Remembrance arose from that experience. The collection opens with three free verse expressions of raw grief, followed by a series of photographs from the author's family album, each paired with a poem written in tanka. Taken together, they tell the story of a loving family lost.
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
I am the keeper of the family stories, letters, photos, terrible telegrams, and diaries. What began as genealogy and chasing ancestors became a desire to learn the personal stories behind the names and dates, what their lives were like, and what character traits I may have inherited from them.
I was drawn in by poet Chad Elliott’s heartache for his homeland in rural Iowa, a sense of place for ancestral longings of the generations before him.
His poems are a compelling exploration of three generations—a sense of loss as a son, a “rough aesthetic" deeply missing as a man, and hope as a father.
Chad Allen Elliott's path to poetry began with a love of music. He has performed original songs across the U.S. for over 20-years, winning several awards for composition including the Woody Guthrie Songwriting Award in 2009. Early in his career, he learned some verses do not need musical embellishment. They stand alone in their own cadence. Since that time, Elliott has penned nearly 2,000 songs and released 22 albums.
In Rumble & Flash, Elliott shares poems composed during his time on the road. These poems are steeped in archetypal themes like fatherhood, love, nature, and spirituality.
In 2010, I met a Somali refugee in Cape Town. His name was Asad Abdullahi. He told the tale of his life with a richness bordering on genius and I was hooked. I spent the next two years tracing his childhood footsteps through the Horn of Africa, looking for anyone and everyone he had encountered. In the course of writing a book about him, I read countless other books about exile, migration, and human beings on the move. My five recommendations are among the books that helped me imagine the experience of exile best.
This is among the most exquisitely rendered memoirs I have ever read. It recounts Aciman’s boyhood in the cosmopolitan world of Alexandria, Egypt, in the 1950s, just before the ethnic nationalism of Egypt’s leader, Gamal Abdal Nassar, swept this world away. Every sentence exudes tender nostalgia for a vanished milieu. It is, profoundly, an exile’s book, mourning and celebrating a life that has been lost.
This richly coloured memoir chronicles the exploits of a flamboyant Jewish family, from its bold arrival in cosmopolitan Alexandria to its defeated exodus three generations later. In elegant and witty prose, Andre Aciman introduces us to the marvellous eccentrics who shaped his life: the strutting daredevil, soldier, salesman, and spy; the two grandmothers, the Princess and the Saint, who gossip in six languages; and Aunt Flora, the German refugee who warns that Jews lose everything "at least twice in their lives." And through it all, we come to know a boy who, even as he longs for a wider world,…
I inhabit the past. You may find me lurking in my four-hundred-year-old Devon cottage, or spot me thinly disguised as the formidable Mistress Agnes, a good wife of a certain age who leads a somewhat chaotic life during the mid-seventeenth century. I write, I read, I research, I share my passion, I write some more. My life revolves around reading, writing and researching history. Having spent the past forty-five years unravelling my own family’s story and loving both historical and crime novels, what could be better than a book that combines all these elements. I have to say that if genealogy was as dangerous a career as some of these books imply, no one would be advised to take it up!
Peter Coldrick is a man without a past, that is until he hires forensic genealogist, Morton Farrier. There are those who will go to any lengths to ensure that Coldrick’s origins remain hidden. Morton’s investigations lead him into danger and make him realise that he needs to begin the quest to uncover the story of his own hidden past.
Peter Coldrick had no past; that was the conclusion drawn by years of personal and professional research. Then he employed the services of one Morton Farrier, Forensic Genealogist – a stubborn, determined man who uses whatever means necessary to uncover the past. With the Coldrick Case, Morton faces his toughest and most dangerous assignment yet, where all of his investigative and genealogical skills are put to the test. However, others are also interested in the Coldrick family, people who will stop at nothing, including murder, to hide the past. As Morton begins to unearth his client’s mysterious past, he is…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
A native of New York’s Long Island, I’ve always been obsessed with the shoreline. My best early memories are of traveling with my family to the eastern edge of Long Island for our two-week summer vacation. My parents didn’t earn a lot of money, and we didn’t vacation often, so those two weeks in August were heavenly. As an adult, I gravitate to coastlines and islands. I’ve always been a fan of books with a strong sense of place, especially when that place is the shore. And I loved setting my current book on an island in the Mediterranean, delving into the qualities and characteristics that make a coastline so evocative and so appealing.
Alexis, a present-day heroine, travels to her mother’s childhood home in Greece, intent upon learning the family’s hidden story. Arriving there, she spies the island of Spinalonga, once an actual leper colony. Hislop then switches time periods, taking the reader to the mid-twentieth century, when leprosy and war tore families apart.
I found Hislop’s writing gentle yet wrenching, and I was heartbroken by scenes between mothers and children who had to separate forever due to illness. But I was moved, too, by the strength, resilience, and capacity for love shown by many of the characters.
I enjoy novels that are based on history, with protagonists who are tested to their very limits. I won’t soon forget this book, and I bet you won’t either!
An atmospheric, vibrant and moving first novel from an exciting new author. On the brink of a life-changing decision, Alexis Fielding longs to find out about her mother's past. But Sofia has never spoken of it. All she admits to is growing up in a small Cretan village before moving to London. When Alexis decides to visit Crete, however, Sofia gives her daughter a letter to take to an old friend, and promises that through her she will learn more. Arriving in Plaka, Alexis is astonished to see that it lies a stone's throw from the tiny, deserted island of…
I inhabit the past. You may find me lurking in my four-hundred-year-old Devon cottage, or spot me thinly disguised as the formidable Mistress Agnes, a good wife of a certain age who leads a somewhat chaotic life during the mid-seventeenth century. I write, I read, I research, I share my passion, I write some more. My life revolves around reading, writing and researching history. Having spent the past forty-five years unravelling my own family’s story and loving both historical and crime novels, what could be better than a book that combines all these elements. I have to say that if genealogy was as dangerous a career as some of these books imply, no one would be advised to take it up!
The Cost of Silence begins with the murder of a genealogist. Have they been silenced before they could uncover something inconvenient? Twenty-three years later, can genealogist Madeline Porter retrace the research of the dead genealogist and uncover a motive for his murder? More to the point, will she put herself in danger if she does?
On the day of the General Election in 1992, a man is stabbed to death in a country church. The murderer is caught quickly, confesses and is convicted. He dies in prison shortly afterwards, having never disclosed the reasons behind his actions. Twenty-three years later, a recently retired crime reporter decides to write a book about the murder, hoping to uncover the motive. He establishes that the murdered man was a genealogist researching parish records held in the church, and he suspects that therein lies the answer. Being unfamiliar with the ins and outs of family history research, he calls…
I inhabit the past. You may find me lurking in my four-hundred-year-old Devon cottage, or spot me thinly disguised as the formidable Mistress Agnes, a good wife of a certain age who leads a somewhat chaotic life during the mid-seventeenth century. I write, I read, I research, I share my passion, I write some more. My life revolves around reading, writing and researching history. Having spent the past forty-five years unravelling my own family’s story and loving both historical and crime novels, what could be better than a book that combines all these elements. I have to say that if genealogy was as dangerous a career as some of these books imply, no one would be advised to take it up!
Probate genealogist, Anna Ames, is given the task of researching the history of the Draycott family. As she does so, she is drawn into the lives of this dysfunctional family, who are not as conventional as they seem. Her research unfolds against a background of the warm portrayal of Anna’s own family life with her husband, who has early-onset dementia, her teenage children, her poetry-loving father, and Bobble the dog.
Anna Ames is not pleased to be asked by her boss to write a profile of a wealthy local family instead of continuing with her usual probate research but the conventional, dull-seeming Draycott family turn out to be seething with secrets. As she discovers more about each one she is at first amused and then alarmed and finally horrified and saddened as she realises the true nature of her task. But when her own family are drawn into a scenario of crime and violence that she had never suspected existed on the streets of Birmingham and the quiet fields and…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I became interested in social and family history when my Turkish friend, Ahmet Ceylan, told me amazing stories about his family. An academic by training, I used my expertise in the history of Turkey to explore the archives and uncover extraordinary details about the lives of the Robinsons. My field research took me to the wolds of Lincolnshire, the side streets of Istanbul, and the foothills of the Himalayas. I am keen to learn more about my own family, and for my next book, I am exploring the lives of people who owned/occupied the land/property where I live in Oxford, UK.
This book is more than just a history of the author’s family. It is full of reflections on life and on family and history in general. At times reading like a detective story, this book inspired me to write about family history. The author delves deep into her working-class origins and explores the lives of characters whose stories – much like the Robinsons in my own work - would have been lost if it had not been for the publication of this book.
'Part detective story, part Dickensian saga, part labour history. A thrilling and unnerving read' Observer
'Mesmeric and deeply moving' Daily Telegraph
'Remarkable, haunting, full of wisdom' The Times
Family history is a massive phenomenon of our times but what are we after when we go in search of our ancestors? Beginning with her grandparents, Alison Light moves between the present and the past, in an extraordinary series of journeys over two centuries, across Britain and beyond.
Epic in scope and deep in feeling, Common People is a family history but also a new…
