Thoughts on "The Crying Tree" by Naseem Rakha

When I first heard about "The Crying Tree" it sounded like a book written just for me--in fact, the writer part of me felt a bit threatened that someone seemed to have taken a plot I myself had been considering writing about and to have done such a good job with it! The Crying Tree has received excellent reviews from a wide variety of sources, including Sister Helen Prejean herself--it was hard for me to imagine being critical of anything that had received Sister Helen's personal stamp of approval. Unfortunately, I was to find The Crying Tree to be a disappointment in multiple ways.

The plot of The Crying Tree focuses on the mother of a murdered teenage boy as she grapples with her feelings as his accused killer's execution date approaches. Since I've already given away that Sister Helen approves of this book, it will be no surprise that the journey here is one of forgiveness and reconciliation.

The rather unpleasant surprise for me was that the journey does not end with the mother (Irene) forgiving Daniel, the man accused of shooting her teenage son as part of a robbery attempt, and with her ensuing feelings of pain during the rest of the process of execution. No. There are plot twists!

More on the plot twists in a moment, but first it has to be said that even if the book HAD gone the way I expected it to, it was already disappointing from a literary standpoint. Instead of creating sophisticated, complex characters who could offer true insights into the many ambiguities and grey areas that are part of any one person's experience of the capital punishment process, Rakha creates two-dimensional characters who are almost laughable in their simplicity. This is especially true of anyone who does not agree with Irene, and Rakha's attempts to include "opposing viewpoints" come across as merely patronizing, as when Irene meets the mother of a soldier serving in Iraq and the author makes sure to spell Iraq as "Ee-rak" whenever the woman pronounces it. (Though perhaps Rakha is just obsessed with place name pronounications, there's also more discussion of how to pronounce "Oregon" and "Illinois" than seems strictly necessary.)

The plot twists, however, are where the book lost whatever power it might have had for me. Irene is surprised when she begins corresponding with Daniel that he does not seem to be monstrous but quite human in his responses. I approved of this as an anti-death penalty activist, since resisting the dehumanization that is a crucial part of the death penalty process is a major part of our strategy. However, then come the plot twists--Daniel didn't kill Irene's son after all! He was in fact her son's gay lover and was framed by someone who did not approve of the boys' relationship! GASP!

I see what Rakha is trying to do here--appearances can be deceiving, love may actually have been present where you saw only hatred and violence, etc., etc., so don't be so quick to judge people, because forgiveness prepares you to learn the truth. But the twist renders the book completely useless in challenging how people actually think about guilty people on Death Row. Sure, Daniel was not a monster after all...because he was innocent. Irene never seeks to forgive or reconcile with the person who actually murdered her son, she just seems relieved that hey, Daniel was okay after all.

"Hey, try to be more forgiving of people who have committed capital crimes, because they might actually have been framed," is not really a helpful or revolutionary message. Perhaps my readers are saying here, "Well, maybe Rakha was not intending to write a book that would be 'helpful' to your cause," and you may be right. Rakha has said in interviews that her focus was meant to be on forgiveness rather than the death penalty itself--but the message of forgiveness is also undermined by her cowardly plot twists towards the end of the novel. In a way Irene is proven "right" because she discovers that Daniel is innocent. How much richer this novel would be if instead the FINAL conclusion was that forgiveness is right even if the person *is* guilty. Not a weak sort of forgiveness that erases their crime or ignores its consequences, but the kind of forgiveness that sees the crime in all its horror and still says, "I will be strong enough to respond to this horror with love instead of allowing my heart to be consumed by a need for vengeance. I will be strong enough to do that even if it means I stand alone."

Now that's a book I would read. And just maybe, one of these days, it will be the book *I* write.