Inspired by Frost
When I set out to write BRANCHING OUT, the sequel to FAMILY TREES, I returned to the Robert Frost poem that I had quoted in the first novel and I found that these stanzas set the perfect tone for the continuation of Ryan and Shelby's story...
I have to be gone for a season or so.
My business awhile is with different trees,
Less carefully nourished, less fruitful than these,
And such as is done to their wood with an axe --
Maples and birches and tamaracks.
I wish I could promise to lie in the night
And think of an orchard's arboreal plight
When slowly (and nobody comes with a light)
Its heart sinks lower under the sod.
But something has to be left to God.
-- "Good-bye and Keep Cold," by Robert Frost
In BRANCHING OUT, after Shelby leaves her childhood home on Meyers Orchard in Bayfield, WI, she faces new challenges and hardships which will test her strength, her convictions, and her love for Ryan Chambers.