Inspiration for The Lightning Tree, by Lene Fogelberg

Lene Fogelberg

I love being in nature. For as long as I can remember I have enjoyed going for walks in the woods or by the sea. I grew up in a small coastal town in the south of Sweden, where the rural surroundings nurtured my love of poetry and reading. The memories of picking seashells on the beach and building fortresses in the woods have always stayed with me, even into adulthood.

Life has sent me across the globe, but whether I find myself in Sweden or in Pennsylvania, Germany or in Asia, I always seek out nature. When we lived in Jakarta, Indonesia, we loved the people, the culture and stunning surroundings. But city life could be difficult because of traffic jams and serious air pollution.

After four years in Jakarta, we moved to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where there was less pollution. We also lived closer to nature and could go for long walks in the verdant jungle. It was such a relief to finally feel connected to nature again, to breath air scented by tropical rain on palm fronds. I often pondered what it would take for mankind to take deforestation and climate change even more seriously. Then it hit me: what if nature started to strike back? I looked at the huge trees surrounding us in the jungle, and the idea for The Natural Intelligence Revolution took form in my mind.

I envisioned a young adult trilogy and over the next few days I developed the storyline, taking place in a small Pennsylvania town where a single mom raises her daughters in an old farm house. Mysterious things begin to happen and the oldest daughter starts to do her own research into what is going on. I wanted the book to be read as a thriller, but at the same time have a coming-of-age element, with a romantic interest. From the very start I wanted the book to be diverse in various ways. A particular challenge I took on, was to make one of the main characters bound to a wheelchair and unresponsive. This was among the hardest things to write, but an aspect that readers have told me was one of their favourite parts of the story.

Having previously written a memoir, I had to rethink a lot on writing. Fortunately my two daughters were teenagers when I started this project and they had plenty of input on the story, and I also immersed myself in young adult literature and entertainment. I was impressed by the pacing and the strong storylines in the YA genre.

The book’s toughest scene to write though, was a traumatic “me-too” episode that happens to the main character, 17-year-old Flora Reed. Having girls the same age, it was important to me to try to write something that could be of meaning to that generation. I wanted the scene to include elements that could be reflected upon by the reader. Who did what and why did they act like that? In what different ways can these type of situations be dealt with? I don’t know how many times I rewrote that scene, until I felt that it could work in the mind of the reader in a positive way.

Writing The Natural Intelligence Revolution trilogy was a labour of love. A love of nature and humanity alike. It was also a way for me to channel my sorrow over mankind’s often brutal and cruel exploitation of our beautiful planet. But most of all, it is a love letter of sorts, to nature, to the strength of today’s youth, and to the generations that come after us.
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Lene Fogelberg is the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Beautiful Affliction: A Memoir. She loves to explore the world and has lived all over the globe—in a small Pennsylvania town, as well as in Germany, Malaysia, and Indonesia. She currently resides in her native Sweden with her family. The Lightning Tree is the first book in her YA trilogy, The Natural Intelligence Revolution. You can learn more about Lene’s books online at https://lenefogelberg.com

The Lightning Tree by Lene Fogelberg

Flora Reed discovers a lifeless body in her front yard the morning after the last day of her junior year of high school. Matters get worse when more people from her small town are found dead under mysterious circumstances and police take an interest in the boy next door, Carl. Flora is convinced that Carl is innocent. Instead, she suspects that the deaths are somehow connected to her younger sister Fauna’s tragic accident a year earlier.

What she learns changes everything and she has to race against time to prevent the killings from spreading. Flora and a small group of friends soon find themselves at the onset of an apocalyptic battle between man and nature, with no one believing their story. The Lightning Tree is the first installment of The Natural Intelligence Revolution Trilogy.

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