Super Short Summary

Set in the late 1800s, and spanning England and Canada, Mary Swan’s novel The Boys in the Trees is about a town reeling from a horrendous crime. It follows many narrators in a small town in the Canadian countryside, who struggle to understand the acts of one man, William Heath, after he shoots his wife and two daughters in cold blood one afternoon in their family home. Tracing the Heaths’ history, the story considers the lasting impact of this kind of tragedy on a community.