The Roots of the Olive Tree: A Novel

An extraordinary new voice in contemporary woman’s fiction, Courtney Miller Santo makes her magnificent debut with The Roots of the Olive Tree, a novel that will delight fans of Sarah Blake’s The Postmistress, The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, and the works of Kristin Hannah.

Five generations of firstborn Keller women live in the same house on an olive grove in secluded northern California. 

Matriarch Anna is 112 and trying to be the oldest woman in the world—and succeeding heartily. Her daughter Bets, granddaughter Callie, great-granddaughter Deb, and great-great granddaughter Erin are also defying longevity norms. When a geneticist comes to study the women at the same time Erin announces she is pregnant with a firstborn boy, the Kellers’ roots are shaken wide open. 

Told in the third-person perspective of each of the women, their story—the secrets and lies that divide them and the love that ultimately ties them together—is revealed in compulsive prose and compassionate drive.

Courtney Miller Santo's compelling and evocative debut novel captures the joys and sorrows of family—the love, secrets, disappointments, jealousies, and forgiveness that tie generations to one another

Meet the Keller family, five generations of firstborn women living together in the same house on a secluded olive grove in the Sacramento Valley of Northern California. Anna, the family matriarch, is 112 and determined to become the oldest person in the world. Strong in mind and firm in body, she rules Hill House, the family home she shares with her daughter Bets, granddaughter Callie, great-granddaughter Deb, and great-great-granddaughter Erin.

While the Keller women are bound by blood, living together has not always been easy. And it is about to become more complicated now that Erin, the youngest, is back, alone and pregnant, after two years abroad with an opera company. Her return and the arrival of a geneticist who has come to study the family's unusual longevity ignites explosive emotions that these women have kept buried and uncovers revelations that will shake them all to their roots.