Why Did God Make the Tree?

A PATRICK DENNY NOVEL

Within the boundary between reality and nightmare, a psychiatrist confronts the dark mysteries of his patients’ minds—and his own.

Something isn’t quite right in Waylingbrooke, New Hampshire. Beneath the shadow of the town’s red brick watchtower, Dr. Patrick Denny—once a successful horror novelist—returns to his former profession of psychiatry, seeking solace in the quiet routines of Everston Psychiatric Hospital. Instead, he finds himself challenging the institution’s rigid reliance on medication as he guides his patients through the labyrinth of their minds: Samantha, an insomniac haunted by her parents’ deaths; Michael, who believes he’s living inside one of Patrick’s stories; and Amelia, a catatonic woman lost for decades in the dark forest of her psyche.

In his attempt to untangle the mysteries of their troubled minds, Patrick finds that his own tormented past begins to bleed into his present, and the macabre storyteller that still dwells within him threatens to emerge. As stories seem to birth stories and reality loses its edges, Patrick must question whether his return to psychiatry offers deliverance or signals his final descent into madness.

Why Did God Make the Tree? stands as a haunting literary exploration of consciousness, with three interconnected parts where surreal dreams and stories-within-stories illuminate the nature of identity. Following in the Gothic tradition of Shirley Jackson and Henry James, Gregg’s evocative debut rewards patient readers with its layered complexity and dreamlike psychological depth, challenging our assumptions about sanity, reality, and the power of the stories we tell ourselves to survive.