Sixteen year old Evie is a loner; she has no real friends. She delivers newspapers on Sunday mornings in the Hokepe Woods subdivision, and she tries to get Jonah Luks, college-aged animal control agent, to notice her. Then, Jonah discovers a dead body in the woods behind the subdivision, and Evie becomes involved in a drama that’s quickly spinning out of control.

I liked this book, but I wouldn’t recommend it to just anyone. First of all, it’s scary and creepy. The main plot element is the murder of a young girl in the woods by an unknown assailant. That kind of story is going to give some kids nightmares. I kind of expected to have bad dreams myself last night, but I slept like a rock. The violence in the story is not terribly graphic, but the atmosphere of the entire novel is intense and edgy. I felt as if the events in the novel were on the edge of an explosion at any given moment. The blurb on the back of the book calls it “a haunting tale.”

And haunting it is. I am haunted after reading The Space Between the Trees by the thought of girls who have empty lives, some of them like Evie never taking risks and others like Evie’s friend Hadley taking so many risks, and al of them empty and hopeless. Evie is awkward and defensive because she has no reason to value herself or her own life. Hadley is abandoned and self-destructive because she has no reason to value herself or her own life. Both girls are obviously headed for trouble, and so when they make one bad decision after another, it’s stressful and nerve-wracking to continue reading, knowing that they’re headed for a big fall.

Then the books ends, not with a bang but with a whimper. As I read reviews after finishing the book, some people liked the ending, and others didn’t. It’s not a conventional suspense novel ending, but it is realistic. Sometimes people get away with lies and really bad deeds. Or at least as far as the legal authorities are concerned, they escape the consequences of their actions. I believe in divine justice and in forgiveness and grace. So, after the close of the book, either Hadley and Evie will receive justice as they continue down their self-destructive paths, or else grace will find them.

I loved the writing in this book. I’ll give you a few examples to close, but I’m not sure the quotations I’ve chosen will pack as much punch in isolation as they did in context. If you like the quotations and if you can manage the emotional intensity of murder and spiritual emptiness, you may want to give the book a try.

Evie introducing her mother to the reader:
“Mom grew up beautiful. Now some beautiful people let their beauty just lie there on them, like a coat of sweat on their face, but Mom, she manages hers. She orders her beauty into shape like a squad of soldiers or a page of math problems. So when she finally decides to look up at me, her face is all set, her beauty ready to salute.”

Evie hearing mysterious footsteps in the woods at night (Yes, of course, they do that.):
“I can feel the hollow places in my body, the arteries that flutter with the coming of my blood, the chambers of my heart that flood and void. The footsteps and my heart become one plodding rhythm. And it takes me a moment to realize that the footsteps have stopped, because I’m still hearing my own pulse in my ears.”

Title quote and key to Evie’s self-image:
“At school that Monday after, there were rumors that Hadley had tried to burn down the woods, rumors that she had killed a man, killed herself, killed Zabet. But somehow my name was never whispered, as if I were a ghost, an escapee, the space between the trees, the page on which a story is written.”

I should also mention that the cover is a bit gimmicky, but I really liked it. The space between the branches on the cover is actually die-cut to reveal the cover page underneath.