The Crying Tree: The Far Reach of Family Roots

When I was sixteen, my family, me included, moved halfway across the country to a place with a climate, culture, and to some extent language very foreign to what I had grown up with. In the long run, the change of scenery did me a world of good, but at the time the entire world felt like a foreign and lonely place. I was sure my parents only did this because they hated me, or because they were crazy, or both. Such is the thinking of teenagers.

The truth was far more complex - or far more simple, depending on one's perspective. Driven by the dying construction boom in the northeast in the 1970's, we followed so many others into the prospering sun belt - and then, as the boom went bust in the American south, we again moved on. Some, like my parents and a few siblings, moved back to Massachusetts and the comfort of our family roots. Others, like me, explored new horizons. The reasons for these and subsequent moves were always equally compelling, to us if not to the casual observer.

Americans, more than the citizens of most nations, move their homesteads. We do it for reasons as varied as there are people. The effect on families, and individual family members, is unpredictable. This unpredictability can make for some excellent story-telling. Such is the case with first-time novelist Naseem Rakha's The Crying Tree.

The novel revolves around the family of Shep Stanley, a teenage boy killed shortly after Nate, the boy's father, moved them all from his wife Irene's childhood home to a remote town in eastern Oregon. Irene blames Nate for the tragedy and escapes into a self-imposed emotional exile, obsessed with the seemingly endless wait for the execution of Shep's killer, Daniel. The family returns to Illinois and each of them - Nate, Irene, and Shep's sister Bliss - retreat into their own emotional shells, a family in name and structure only.

After nineteen years, prison Superintendent Tab Mason informs Irene that Daniel's execution will finally happen - in four weeks. This sets in motion a series of revelations that shake the Stanley family to its core. Nine years before, on what should have been Shep's 25th birthday, Irene's aborted suicide attempt prompted her to re-evaluate her life. Rather than live for Daniel's death, she startles herself and the prisoner by writing him a letter of forgiveness. This leads to a secret nine-year correspondence that blossoms into an odd relationship, something akin to friendship.

The notice of execution brings to light not only Irene's secrets, but also some held by Nate that finally explain Shep's otherwise pointless murder and the boy's connection to the convicted man. Bliss, now a Texas prosecutor, intervenes in unexpected ways to help her estranged parents come to terms with the feelings they've long suppressed and have only begun to understand. The execution also challenges Superintendent Mason's uneasy truce with himself over his own buried family history, including his relationship with his estranged brother languishing in his own prison hell - on the other side of the wall, so to speak, from his law-abiding younger brother.

The Crying Tree is a story of violence and healing, of hurting and forgiveness, of loves discovered and lost and then, sometimes, rediscovered. It is the story of the complicated and often hidden relationships among people brought together by circumstances beyond their control - sometimes by a seemingly rash decision to move across the country, other times by decisions made by perfect strangers in relation to people brought close by sheer accident. Complex characters housed in the shells of simple people expertly interwoven by beautiful language and artful narrative bring The Crying Tree into vivid focus from page one. Rakha's writing reminds the reader that even what appears to be a cut-and-dried situation may contain nuances of meaning that often escape our attention at first glance - and that the bonds of family take many forms.

Recommended.

The Crying Tree by Naseem Rakha (2009: Random House).