The Lightning Tree by Rebecca Hendry

A Guest Review by Catherine McNeil

“There are no rules in grief,” says Patti Smith, a good mantra to hold close when reading Rebecca Hendry’s The Lightning Tree. The book contains a beautifully woven sequence of lyric poems, circling the impossible burden of loss through spare, exquisite lines, and in doing so providing a kind of navigational map for the grieving heart. “Grief is a primal, universal force that unites us all,” she tells us in the book’s preface. “Wail and keen / shriek like a banshee / on the Irish moors /… / wear his sweater on St. Patrick’s Day.”

The book cover is a photographic image of a tree struck by lightning, close to Hendry’s home in Gibsons, BC. In her epigraph, we learn that when trees are struck by lightning, “the damage is instant and explosive.” The wound will not heal. The tree attempts to seal off the wound from the healthy parts—nature’s wisdom—as with grief, when we walk the dark halls of loss. A black and white faded image of the wounded tree appears again on the title page.

We walk the long path of grief with Hendry, “the primal universal force that unites us all.” We feel the weight of her sadness in lines like “how the joy of togetherness / and the sting of apart / inhabit the same space / how they always will” and “imagine / he looked back at you / on the beach / toddler on your hip / praying, always praying / for his safety.”

We learn in the preface that Hendry lost Garrett, the father of her children, to accidental poisoning in August 2020. This was during the COVID-19 years when street drugs increased in lethality. From 2020-2024, there were over 11,000 overdose deaths in British Columbia, a statistic that doubled from the previous five years.

Hendry’s beautifully crafted poems are universal: tender, real, “yes, the universe had cracked apart / solar winds howling.” They offer up raw instructions: “take his ashes / to the wetlands of Sergeant’s Bay / to the tree that was struck by lightning / forever altered / alive but no longer whole.” The closing poem is followed by a photograph of the bay, close to the wetlands near the lightning tree.

The book closes with a photo image of the waterlilies “in the rich silt of the marsh bed” where the ceremony with Garrett’s ashes took place. The book’s closing lines leave the reader with the certainty of nature’s eternal cycles:

remember
that atoms
are eternal
they will live on
in the rich silt of the marsh bed
in the waterlilies
fed by the minerals of his bones 

The Lightning Tree was awarded honourable mention in the 2025 Raven Chapbook contest and is published as part of the Raven Chapbooks Indigo Series. This is a small and timeless book of intimate dimensions (7” x 4 ¾”) that can be gift from heart to heart.

About the Author

Rebecca Hendry has published two novels, One Good Thing (Touchwood Editions, 2018) and Grace River (Brindle and Glass, 2009), and her short fiction has appeared in the Dalhousie Review, Wascana Review, Event, Windsor Review, Room, and other literary journals. She has been a book editor for over twenty years, working for Canadian publishing houses as well as self-publishing companies and private clients. She lives in Gibsons, BC.

About the Reviewer

Catherine McNeil is an author living in Gibsons, BC and was the recipient of the National Milieu’s Emerging Writer’s Contest for her first poetry book under the influence (Bedazzled Ink) in 2016. emily and elspeth, her second book of poetry (Caitlin Press, 2023) won first prize in the Sunshine Coast Book Awards in the category of Diversity. Poems from emily and elspeth are in Queer Chroma, Rampike, Sinister Wisdom and Room of One’s Own. Other publications include Event, Capilano Review, West Coast Line, Exact Fare 2 and The Fed Anthology. Recently, she received first prize in fiction in the Sunshine Coast Not An Island Literary Contest.

Book Details

• THE LIGHTNING TREE by Rebecca Hendry

• Raven Chapbooks, 2025 ISBN:978-1-7781603-9-4

• available at RavenChapbooks.ca $20