Branching Out

When I think of home, I think of trees, perhaps especially the stately black walnut of my parents’ backyard, its muscular branches stretching over the lawn, limbs overrun by squirrels. Every fall, lime-green fruit the size of billiard balls dropped perilously from its heights. Brushing up against our Vancouver rental was a strawberry tree, a little world thrumming with life: giant furred bees, iridescent hummingbirds, the occasional slumbering raccoon. When it was felled after a hard winter, I took it as a sign that our time in the city had also come to an end. These days I live alongside a towering maple, its lush greenery tempering Montreal’s summer heat and producing a dance of dappled light across my living room floor.

Anita Rau Badami’s fifth novel, Asha in Her Garden, understands the significance of trees — as companions, witnesses, and metaphors for stability and change. The book opens with a tree’s destruction. Asha and her middle-aged daughter...