Promise of the Asian Pear Tree

I STEERED MY pickup down the long drive and out the front gate of the farmhouse. I watched in the rearview mirror as the house—and my dreams with it—faded from view.

In the bed of the pickup was most of what I owned. I was moving. Running away from an abusive marriage and yet another dead end. So much of my life had been a struggle. Abuse and neglect as a child. A first marriage to a violent alcoholic and drug addict. Then this second marriage, which had seemed so right. But he turned out to be abusive too, and I feared for myself and my kids.

I’d found a teaching job in Utah, near where I grew up, hundreds of miles from