The Francis Tree
Author: Kevin Prochaska
Price:
$13.00 paperback
 About
the Book:
Between Earth and Heaven is a special place
where animals go...or so the tale is told!
Deep in the woods, not too far from where eleven-year-old Thomas
lives, a gigantic spreading oak has sprung up overnight! Concerned
about a small crippled rabbit that he follows into the forest, Thomas
stumbles upon the entrance to a place where departed animals go—definitely
not Earth but not quite Heaven either. When the rabbit disappears
inside the oak, Thomas is not far behind. Bewildered by an ever-expanding
new world, he discovers a wondrous place filled with every conceivable
species of animal.
There he meets Francis, the proprietor of this marvelous world,
a kind and gentle lover of all animals...and people. Francis takes
him on an adventure through this delightful world filled with lots
of fun and laughter, and some scary moments too. There Thomas is
happier than he’s been in a long, long time, yet he hides
a deep dark secret he hopes no one will ever guess. In the end,
will Francis be able to help him as he has so many of the other
inhabitants of this happy place?
Excerpt:
Through the rows of vegetables there appeared a tall thin man with
a
deep golden tan, long hair dangling off his shoulders as he walked
toward us.
At first I thought he was Tarzan, but he was definitely too skinny
to be the
Ape Man. As he drew nearer I could see he was quite handsome, but
my face
flushed with embarrassment when I saw the stranger wore only an
outfit
made of skins.
The man stopped in front of us, taking a big bite out of a red apple.
“Greetings, Francis,” he said as he began to chew. He
held up the partially
eaten fruit. “Really good crop this year. Probably my best
apple crop
ever.” Then he looked over at me. “The stumbler?”
“Yes,” Francis answered. “This is Thomas.”
Francis turned to me.
“Thomas, I’d like you to meet our gardener. He takes
care of all this you see
here.”
“And his name would be—” I asked.
Francis chuckled.
“Adam, of course.”
I should have guessed that one.
“Good to meet you, Adam,” I said. “You have quite
a nice garden here.”
“We do our best,” he replied, taking another bite of
the fruit.
“I thought you would have given up on apples,” I said,
“all things considered,
that is.”
“Given up on apples?” he asked in a surprised tone.
“Why heavens no,
Stumbler. Hey, I paid my dues on that one a long time ago, let me
tell you.
You might say that I’ve finally discovered my core values.”
I looked at his outfit.
“Is that all you wear?” I asked.
“Certainly,” he replied. “It’s all I need
to wear here, unless I’m working
in the briar patch and then I switch to coveralls—or yowzah!
It’s light and
quite comfortable. And as you can see, I can get a great tan.”
Adam bent over and did something quite unusual. He began unscrewing
one of the vegetables from the ground. I thought this quite silly
until he
pulled it up and showed it to us. It was then I saw large threads
like a screw
winding around the outside of the vegetable.
“Something we’ve been working on,” he said proudly.
“Makes it much
easier to harvest food from the ground. Don’t need to bring
a shovel, and no
getting dirt all over you. Just unscrew each veggie and up it comes,
and with
just one hand.”
“Quite an idea, Adam,” Francis said, obviously impressed
by what he
saw.
Then Adam held up a brass ball and opened it. The ball had a hinge
that
kept the two pieces together and a little latch on the side opposite
of the
hinges.
“Like it?” he said.
“What is it?” I asked.
“It’s a rounder,” he explained. “Something
I’m testing right now. It keeps
veggies that are supposed to be round just that way. You know, sometimes
when they grow in the ground or even on top of it, they tend to
take on a
weird shape. Or if there’s something in the ground like a
rock or a tree root,
they get bent out of shape.”
I wondered if this rounder thing would work on grown ups—you
know,
when they get bent out of shape. Adam took a small onion from his
pocket
and placed it into the rounder. Then he closed it.
“See,” he explained. “Now it has to grow round.
It has no choice but to
take on the form of the rounder in which it sits. Clever idea, huh?
I got it
from your Constitution by the way.”
“Say what?”
“Your Constitution,” he repeated. “You know, where
it says, ‘in order to
form a more perfect onion.’”
“That’s ‘union,’” I corrected. “Not
onion.”
“Oh,” Adam said, surprised by my words, “that’s
where that apple stem
landed.” Then he smiled. “Well, it’s onion now.
And I’m forming a more perfect
onion, lots of them in fact.”
He pointed to a patch of ground where a bunch of rounders jutted
from
the soil.
“That’s my test plot,” he said proudly.
“I’m sure it will do very nicely,” Francis replied.
“Well,” Adam said, “You two enjoy your time in
the Garden. I’ve got to
be running off. Got to see what news Eve’s got for me.”
“Eve’s here too?” I asked.
“She’s the apple of my eye,” Adam said proudly.
“Does that surprise you
to find both of us in the Garden, Thomas? After all, what’s
a Garden without
a woman’s touch?”
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