The Nail in the Tree meditates on crucial subjects in devastating circumstances, exploring how childhood can be violent and generative, how trauma integrates in art and daily life, and what the artist's role is. In this part memoir, part art-historical treatise, Carol Ann Davis narrates her experience of raising two sons in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, on the day of and during the aftermath of the shooting there. She describes revelations her children come to in the weeks that follow, quietly echoes the words of a principal on that day, and recounts painful series of texts and calls to further and further distant family members. She writes in beautiful, devastating, poetic language.