Just Jennifer

Seeds: One Man's Serendipitous Journey to Find the Trees That Inspired Famous American Writers from Faulkner to Kerouac, Welty to Wharton by Richard Horan (Harper Perennial, April 2011)

Richard Horan gets an idea one day:  he will visit the homes of historical and literary figures he greatly admired, collect seeds from important trees there, then plant the seeds, nurture the saplings, then what?  It’s the “then what”, the absence of a completely formed plan that keep this intriguing travelogue from being extraordinary.  Horan’s seed collection begins accidentally and without much rhyme or reason.  Horan visits homes such as Lincoln’s, Twains, Faulkner, Washington, Jefferson and Helen Keller.  Each chapter, some headed with illustrations done by Horan’s sister and nephew of leaves, recaps Horan’s trip to the famous local and gives Horan’s impression, often brief, of the former owner of the house and tree.  Some of the insights he offers are thoughtful and personal, others more banal.  The seeds are collected in no specific order, seemingly without a plan.  This is the type of book you really, really want to like if you are a nature lover, and will try to seek out some meaning from the pages.  Horan must have been passionate (or a bit crazy) to set out on his odyssey, but it doesn’t always come through in these pages.