The Tree Doctor

“In her brilliant second novel, Mockett delicately combines how we approach time and mortality.”—Bethanne Patrick, Los Angeles Times

“Juggling the demands of caregiving, teaching, and a budding affair with an arborist, this sensual and profound novel is an exploration of the natural cycle of life and death, echoing themes of The Tale of Genji.”—Oprah Daily

“Marie Mutsuki Mockett’s luminous new novel provides the hope and beauty we need after the isolation and disillusionment of the pandemic . . . This coming-of-middle-age novel—a rarely dramatized but radically important stage in women’s lives—will leave me thinking for a long time.”—Celeste Ng

“Mesmerizing . . . The Tree Doctor explores one woman’s sexuality at a time of life rarely written about, during a time in history that we are only now beginning to process. A beautiful and evocative, necessary book.”—Marcy Dermansky

“This is a gorgeous and completely unique novel, bristling with life like the garden it describes. It is melancholy, erotic, hopeful, meditative, frightening, and even funny—a book about solitude that is never lonely, a book that is both timeless and utterly contemporary. I finished it grateful to Marie Mutsuki Mockett for this orgy of sensory pleasures, and this opportunity to pause and consider life in a time of collective fear and uncertainty. A balm to the spirit and a lovely work of art.”—Lydia Kiesling

“Like the best of literature, The Tree Doctor allows us to see ourselves, but reading this beautifully honed story is also an act of healing. Every page brought new color, feeling, and wisdom into my life, changing me, not unlike the narrator’s mended cherry tree with its surprising spring blooms. Marie Mutsuki Mockett is an exquisite writer.”—Alan Heathcock

“Sex, death, rebirth, and literature—it’s all here, in one astonishing book. The Tree Doctor made me want to go have an affair!”—Gish Jen

“This finely-calibrated, groundbreaking chronicle of one woman's midlife awakening captivated me from the very first sentence. With deadpan humor and deep compassion, Marie Mutsuki Mockett perfectly captures the vast social, political, and cultural changes wrought by the pandemic, spinning them into a gorgeous, utterly original novel. I loved it.”—Joanna Rakoff

“The Tree Doctor is a remarkable novel: sexy and profound, cerebral and corporeal. Never before have I been so turned on by trees and flowers, or laughed so much about the mysteries of sex and sexual desire. Marie Mutsuki Mockett depicts grief and self-discovery with such beauty and restrained vulnerability. I loved being in the singular world of this book.”—Edan Lepucki

"What I love about Marie Mutsuki Mockett's work is every book has its own unique concern, landscape, texture, mood. The Tree Doctor is unlike anything I have read. In it Mockett tells many stories at once: how the most luscious flora coexist among the mundane and often impossible concerns of suburbia and cities; how reckonings operate when you are mother and daughter and wife and lover; how illness makes its way from the personal to the universal and back again—and more! A California book, a pandemic novel, a cautionary tale, a romance in which descriptions of plants brush up against scenes of global catastrophe and build into thrilling sequences of forbidden love. This is a novel to highlight and underline, to get lost in, to dream of, to share, to study, to surrender to. "—Porochista Khakpour

“Through a yearning first-person narration, the protagonist’s trials evoke difficult but vital questions about survival and endurance. . . . These interrogations are threaded seamlessly into the narrator’s pursuit of her own power, a pursuit that reveals just how liberating the decision to dismantle and reassemble one’s self can be. An affecting story of personal transformation, as broody as it is erotic.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)