Charity Eleanor Sintz likes girls better than boys but this is the least of her problems. The year is 1972, Tricky Dick is in the White House, and four-year-old Charity has managed to offend the better part of Roosevelt County, Indiana, by not crying at her mother’s funeral. Charity learns at a young age that with rare exceptions, people in books are usually safer and more interesting than the people in front of her and that trees are more comforting than humans; sometimes Charity feels trapped in the wrong species. Left to her own devices, she grows into a random weed that can’t find a squat in the garden. But if the entire world is outside the garden, maybe it’s not all bad. | The Hedge Tree by Laura Jo Merrell, Paperback | Indigo Chapters