The Winter-Blooming Tree draws us into the lives of Ursula Koehl-Niederhauser, a school teacher suffering from lapses of memory who is convinced that she has dementia; Andreas, her charming, well-intentioned but somewhat self-absorbed husband; and their grown daughter, Mia, who is about to move home after bouncing all over the country, trying to find herself as a journalist. Distracted by thoughts and memories of the winter-blooming apple tree in her laundry room, Ursula misses the neurologist’s diagnosis and becomes convinced she is falling ill. Andreas, certain that she is fine, refuses to worry her with his own work and health problems. Mia, caught up with her own situation, has no idea that her parents are struggling and can’t understand why her mother, especially, is behaving so badly. The Winter-Blooming Tree delves into the dissonance between family members and how sometimes pride is the only thing standing between those we love and the stories we tell ourselves.

Barbara Langhorst was born and educated in Edmonton, Alberta. She holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Alberta and teaches at St. Peter’s College, SK, where she has had the pleasure of meeting many of Canada’s finest writers. She and her husband are empty nesters who share their acreage with several pets and the local wildlife. Restless White Fields is her first book of poetry.

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Lyrical, sassy, and wry, The Winter-Blooming Tree is an intimate, poignant rendering of a ‘cold season’ in a marriage of many years. Langhorst portrays her characters’ inner lives and daily tussles with life’s challenges during a flashpoint of familial crisis with compassion and warmth. The Winter-Blooming Tree is also a story of the north. The novel’s lush, sensory world with its “tall dark spruce,” “waving pines,” “pale ribs of aspen and papery birch” and forests in which “deer and foxes slipped by, brief shadows in sunlight” offers much reading pleasure. A rich meditation on memory, and how past trauma and grief figure in the present; set against this, and woven poetically throughout, is forgiveness, and hope. Langhorst’s characters and their world will stay with me for a long time. A totally absorbing read.

Jeanette Lynes, The Small Things That End the World & The Factory Voice