Cassie McCullough

But the whole, the entire tree is being held up by its sort of dead history.

So we basically traveled backwards first through all of her ancestors, back to the founding family of bums who, you know, built up the big lumber company or whatever.

cut down half the trees in the first place.

So we see all those characters and all their motivations.

So did you see the table of contents?

That's how you understand where she fits in.

The table of contents is a cross-section of a tree with a line drawn through it with the dates.

So you go backwards from the future.

to the center and then you go forwards again and that's that's how it runs and she's only in the sapwood the living uh white sapwood not the dark heartwood so her story is that but we only see part of it you know because of course these rings run all the way around but we're basically like a worm that's eating through the middle of the tree so there's this constant reminder that

that we're actually just the act of reading a book that's made out of trees.

We're killing them.

And even our journey through the story is destroying the tree.

And we're holding this book that's like an artifact

That's got the tree rings down, you know, on the side where the edges of the paper, you know, so you're holding this artifact and you're starting at either end of the book with Jake's story and you really feel part of her and part of her world.

And then you're going in deeper into the tree.

And as you go further, you realize that you're holding this bit of dead tree in your hands.

It's been like murdered for your entertainment.

Yeah.

And, you know, and she's constantly referring to books that character and all the other characters as well have this love of books all the way through.

Murderers.