Ivy’s Tree is the story of a 78 year old woman learning to navigate one of the largest cities in the world: Tokyo. With a distinct sense of place – Tokyo in the fraught economic times of 2007-08 – Ivy’s Tree is also the description of an old woman coming to terms with her relationship to her family. Summoned by her only daughter to Tokyo, Ivy is newly widowed and adjusting uneasily to life without her husband. Tokyo is a daunting city for a woman travelling alone, but more daunting is the difficult relationship between mother and daughter. Ivy has no connection with her son-in-law, a traditional Japanese salary man, and her grandsons, who do not know her.

Wendy Burton studied English literature and feminist epistemology and taught work-place writing and adult education. She writes short stories, novels, and academic and creative non-fiction. She has had prose-poetry and academic non-fiction published over the past 20 years, most notably “Swimming Winter’s Lake” in Down in the Valley, editor Trevor Carolan and “Histories of Aboriginal Adult Education” in Contexts of Adult Education: Canadian perspectives, edited by Fenwick, Nesbitt, & Spencer. Ivy’s Tree is her debut novel.

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