Both clear-eyed and tender hearted, Two Trees Make a Forest is a profound and gorgeously written meditation on the natural and familial environments that shape us. Jessica J Lee is a poetic talent keenly attentive to the mysterious and sublime - Robert Macfarlane

After unearthing her grandfather's hidden memoir, Jessica J. Lee embarks on a journey to Taiwan to piece together her family's fractured history.

From lush forests, towering mountains and precipitous coasts to the abstract landscapes of language and memory, Lee traces stories of a country built on natural and political fault lines, and of its people.

'A beautiful, fully-realised tribute to a family and a brave, diligent search for understanding in the mist' Amy Liptrot

'Both clear-eyed and tender hearted; Lee is a poetic talent keenly attentive to the mysterious and sublime' Sharlene Teo

I have learned many words for 'island': isle, atoll, eyot, islet, or skerry. They exist in archipelagos or alone, and always, by definition, I have understood them by their relation to water. But the Chinese word for island knows nothing of water. For a civilisation grown inland from the sea, the vastness of mountains was a better analogue: (dao, 'island') built from the relationship between earth and sky.

Between tectonic plates and conflicting cultures, Taiwan is an island of extremes: high mountains, exposed flatlands, thick forests. After unearthing a hidden memoir of her grandfather's life, written on the cusp of his total memory loss, Jessica J Lee hunts his story, in parallel with exploring Taiwan, hoping to understand the quakes that brought her family from China, to Taiwan and Canada, and the ways in which our human stories are interlaced with geographical forces. Part-nature writing, part-biography, Two Trees Make a Forest traces the natural and human stories that shaped an island and a family.