In the fall of 1953, three teenagers find a clutch of long-lost Roman coins while clear­ing veg­eta­bles from a gov­ern­ment field, and they argue over what to do with this new-found wealth. Nevena insists they should be turned over as they right­fully belong to the coun­try. János wants to keep them. And Dor­ján walks the line between the two. The deci­sion to con­ceal their dis­cov­ery turns dis­as­trous when János dis­ap­pears. Dor­ján and Nevena are left to ques­tion every­thing they believed to be true, while the mother of the miss­ing boy, a widow named Gitta, slowly unrav­els. Has János used the money to escape the home that sti­fles him? Or has some­thing much more sin­is­ter taken place?

The Widow Tree is a com­pelling, richly lay­ered story of fatal plans and silent betray­als in a tightly knit Yugoslav vil­lage, where the post­war air is simul­ta­ne­ously flush with hope and weighted with sus­pi­cion. Amidst an intri­cate web of cul­tural ten­sions, gov­ern­ment con­trol, fam­ily bonds, and past mis­takes, the truth behind many closely guarded secrets is revealed—with life-altering consequences.

Praise for The Widow Tree

“…a care­fully crafted story that lay­ers sus­pense and suc­ceeds in ren­der­ing each betrayal, small or large, as a painful shock…As a writer, Lun­dri­gan is sleek and spare with the gift of ren­der­ing small details in vivid strokes that leave them lin­ger­ing long after we have turned the page…“
Laura Eggert­son, Toronto Star

“...an emo­tion­ally intense study of strained rela­tion­ships, but this time [Lun­dri­gan has] embed­ded the mys­ter­ies of the human heart in a solid mys­tery.”
The Evening Telegram

“Hor­ri­fy­ing but fas­ci­nat­ing, the story is enthralling.”
Pub­lish­ers Weekly

“… for its bru­tal genius.”
Toronto Pub­lic Libraries, Staff Pick, Decem­ber 2013

“Most Antic­i­pated Books of Fall 2013″
Quill & Quire

“Where Lun­dri­gan suc­ceeds, where she’s always suc­ceeded in fact, is in her abil­ity to craft rich, absorb­ing, affect­ing char­ac­ters so vivid that they appear to live and breathe in a time and space all of their own.”
Aaron West­er­man, Typo­graph­i­cal Era

“Lun­dri­gan tack­les the ter­rain of 1950s Yugoslavia with such a grace­ful con­fi­dence and inti­mate knowl­edge of her sub­ject, you will be trans­ported. Deftly thread­ing its metaphors like a suture on the body politic of this for­mer nation, this is one of the most sur­pris­ing and impor­tant works of lit­er­ary fic­tion this year.”
Whit­ney Moran, The Coast

“Lundrigan’s incan­ta­tion of a Balkan vil­lage rubbed raw by his­tory is sen­sual and pow­er­ful, a coming-of-age story set in a world that eats its young.”
Peter Behrens, Author of The Law of Dreams

“The Widow Tree is a dense book — the prose thickly woven with metaphor, immensely detailed and often poetic… This time around, Lun­dri­gan, a Newfie-Lit dar­ling, con­vinc­ingly ani­mates a 1950s Yugosla­vian vil­lage, pop­u­lat­ing it with a cast of char­ac­ters who know their way around intrigue, both polit­i­cal and per­sonal: a father mys­te­ri­ously killed, a dis­cov­ered horde of Roman coins, and love tri­an­gles past and present. …Lun­dri­gan ulti­mately rewards the per­se­ver­ing with an absorb­ing, beau­ti­ful read.“
Elle Mag­a­zine

“The reader fol­lows the dis­sec­tion of these lives with a kind of fas­ci­nated horror—there is lit­tle com­fort to be found—but the telling is so intense and the writ­ing so com­pelling there can be no ques­tion of set­ting it aside before the end.”
Mar­garet Thomp­son, The Coastal Spectator

“The Widow Tree is a richly ren­dered lit­er­ary mys­tery with well-wrought characters…As always with Nicole’s work, this is an emo­tion­ally intense study of strained rela­tion­ships, but this time she’s embed­ded the mys­ter­ies of the human heart in a solid mys­tery of a story. One that’s about ‘fatal plans and silent betray­als.’ It’s a fab­u­lous fifth novel by a Cana­dian author more peo­ple ought to be read­ing.“
Chad Pel­ley, Salty Ink

“…strongly plot­ted novel…The Widow Tree deftly dra­ma­tizes the ways fam­ily tragedies play out against the larger back­drop of national and eth­nic inter­ests.“
Can­dace Fer­tile, Quill & Quire