Review of KINSHIP of CLOVER

Kinship of Clover

by Ellen Meeropol

Published April 4th, 2017 by Red Hen Press

Paperback, 248 pages

He was nine when the vines first wrapped themselves around him and burrowed into his skin. Now a college botany major, Jeremy is desperately looking for a way to listen to the plants and stave off their extinction. But when the grip of the vines becomes too intense and Health Services starts asking questions, he flees to Brooklyn, where fate puts him face to face with a group of climate justice activists who assure him they have a plan to save the planet and his plants.

As the group readies itself to make a big Earth Day splash, Jeremy soon realizes these eco-terrorists devotion to activism might have him and those closest to him tangled up in more trouble than he was prepared to face. With the help of a determined, differently abled flame from his childhood, Zoe; her deteriorating, once rabble-rousing grandmother; and some shocking and illuminating revelations from the past, Jeremy must weigh completing his mission to save the plants against protecting the ones he loves, and confront the most critical question of all: how do you stay true to the people you care about while trying to change the world?

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Kinship of Clover is a unique, innovative themed book that captured me into its unconventional world keeping me apprehended until the end. I like how the book consists of two different stories that are connected by a minute thread at first, but then as the story grows the thread further entwines them. Within these stories are twists and mysteries that you will not foresee in addition the plot contains despair, loss, hope, goals, and idealism. I have two favorite protagonists since two completely different stories happen in this book. My first is Jeremy I find him enchanting. He is sentimental, caring, yet carries around a sadness for multiple reasons, one is due to his deep connection with the extinction of plants. My second is Flo who is a spitfire that does not censor her opinion in her old age nor ever has. Flo has been a political activist since the 1960’s fighting for what is right, even though she considers herself a communist. I loved that she fought her hardest to be independent as Alzheimer’s stole it from her.

So many of Flo’s heros died young...Maybe it was better to go out in a blaze of youthful energy instead of this incremental wilting of nerve cells, crumbling of synapses, spots of mold eating up her memories.

There is a great deal to learn about botany in this book which I found fascinating for instance, nitrogen fixation, dynamic accumulator, and petrichor (peh-tra-chore). Therefore, facts have been pulled straight from the headlines regarding global warming on how fast the plants are going extinct and Sudden Oak Death. Whereas, there only a few parts of the book that did not sit well with me and that consists of some unfinished elements (without giving too much away) such as the FBI, Jeremy & Tim’s relationship, and did Jeremy gain control of the plants? Finally, Ellen Meeropol wrote a book prior to this one in 2011 called HOUSE ARREST that explains more in depth as to what happened to Jeremy’s family that tore it apart when he was a young boy.

In Jeremy’s first childhood memory, at age five or six, he stepped outside with his mom and Tim after a spring rain and sniffed the earthy air. “What’s that smell? He had asked. “Petrichor,” Francie told him. “It’s a mix of bacterial secretion with plant oil. Rain after a long dry spell releases it into the air.”

Go get a copy of this spellbinding book!

It started with the familiar tingling in his fingertips and the tremble germinating deep in his flesh. Tender sprouts grew around his muscle fibers and blood vessels, getting ready to burst out. They poked through the skin with a hot pinch of pain and his hands were spring-growing twigs, swelling and pulsing...And then the buds swelled and burst into flower....The blooms were large and spiky and deep red.

Ellen Meeropol is fascinated by characters on the fault lines of political upheaval. Previous work includes a dramatic script telling the story of the Rosenberg Fund for Children which has been produced in four U.S cities, most recently in Boston. Elli is the wife of Robert Meeropol, youngest son of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. Elli is a former nurse and independent bookstore event coordinator and the author of two previous novels, House Arrest and On Hurricane Island. She is a founding member of Straw Dog Writers Guild. Short fiction and essays have appeared in Bridges, DoveTales, Pedestal, Rumpus, Portland Magazine, and the Writer’s Chronicle. 

Connect with her on Facebook, Twitter, and GoodReads.

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