“An Interview With Gene Wolfe § Peace”, Melissa Mia Hall2007-08 (Gene Wolfe)⁠:

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M M H: [background] Okay, I wanted to ask about Peace, your first mainstream novel and how it evolved. Did it grow organically? Did you plot it carefully?

W: No, because it isn’t a plotting book … The basic idea is that a man has died and he is haunting his own mind, his own past. This is something very few people seem to understand about Peace.

If you’ll notice, the opening line of the book is ‘The elm tree planted by Eleanor Bold, the judge’s daughter, fell last night.’ And, in the closing chapters of the book, Eleanor Bold comes to him and requests permission to plant an elm on his grave when he dies (she’s on a reforestation kick or something) and of course, the old legend is—if there’s a tree on a grave, when the tree falls, the falling of the tree releases a ghost on the Earth. In Peace that ghost prowls through his memories throughout the book.