MY MOSTLY HAPPY LIFE: Autobiography of a Climbing Tree

Once upon a time, Samuel Swerling, a World War II veteran and inventor, decided to build a park. It would be filled with trees trained to grow in such a way that children could easily climb them. He hired Alonso Hannah, a one-armed arborist, and began to turn his dream into the reality. After five years, Alonso and Sam had created a small, privately-owned park in a big publicly-run city.

Sam married Ghita, bought an apartment across the street from his park, and had five children.

People fell in love at the Samuel Swerling Park. Painters painted pictures; pretty girls basked in the sun; dogs chased Frisbees; and time stood still. Most of all, though, children did what Sam had created the park for them to do: They climbed trees.

The narrator of this book in one of the climbing trees in the Samuel Swerling Park.

He thrives on human contact, and has has a long and happy life. Lately, however, he has been subjected to life-threatening injuries by Jarvis Larchmont, a power-hungry politician who was thrown out of the park for bullying when he was twelve years old.

Time passes.

Sam's granddaughter, Esther Swerling, is now in charge of the park. Esther is young, beautiful, and like her grandfather, an inventor. When a hurricane floods the area, Esther and her family provide food, warmth, and shelter to those seeking refuge. At the same time, the City's beloved mayor is hospitalized, and Jarvis Larchmont is put in charge of the Department of Parks. Still bitterly resentful at having been thrown out of the Samuel Swerling Park as a child, he joins forces with eco-terrorists to destroy Sam's creation.

Suddenly, our narrator and his fellow climbing trees are separated from people. Separated from children. Separated from all that they know and love.

They cry...and they begin to die.

Then Esther, her friends, and her family organize.

And they fight back.