Goethe’s Oak: A Holocaust Story | John T. Price | 9781948509602 | $19.99 | Color Tradepaper | 68 p | Release 09/20/2025
AUTHOR JIM HARRISON might as well have been describing John Price writing this book when he penned this thought: “An earthdiver swimming in the soil to understand the roots and tendrils of trees.”
“This story began in 2015 during a visit to the Buchenwald Memorial near Weimar, Germany. There, beside tributes to the concentration camp’s human victims, I unexpectedly encountered a large tree stump upon which visitors had left hundreds of small stones—a tradition in Jewish culture intended to honor the souls of the dead. Nearby, a small plaque read ‘Goethe Eiche.’ Goethe’s Oak. I wanted to know more about this tree. . . . What special meaning did it hold for Buchenwald’s prisoners, and for others?”— John T. Price, from the Prologue
WRITING FROM THE perspective of the legendary Goethe’s Oak, John T. Price reimagines and honors the life of an extraordinary tree. Drawing on centuries of human remembrances, from the tree’s namesake, writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, to prisoners at Buchenwald in the 1940s, Price intertwines their stories with recent scientific research into the underground communication networks of trees. Goethe’s Oak offers readers a poignant yet inspiring picture of nature’s ability to comfort.
JOHN T. PRICE is the author of four creative nonfiction books: Not Just Any Land: A Personal and Literary Journey into the American Grasslands, Man Killed by Pheasant and Other Kinships, Daddy Long Legs: The Natural Education of a Father, and All Is Leaf: Essays and Transformations. He is the Regents/Foundation Distinguished Professor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, where he directs the English Department’s Creative Nonfiction Writing Program, and is a faculty member in the Goldstein Center for Human Rights.