‘Tree House’ speaks softly to readers but carries a big stick

 

This review was originally published on March 27, 2009 in the Standard-Examiner newspaper. Due to a website update, it disappeared from the site. A search of Internet Archive failed to locate it. I am grateful to Christopher Bigelow, publisher of Zarahemla Books, providing a copy they had retained. Author Douglas Thayer died in 2017 at age 88.

Zarahemla Books’ latest offering in regional, LDS culture fiction, “The Tree House,” by Brigham Young University professor Douglas Thayer, maintains a soft grip on the reader which slowly tightens like a vice. Even when you think life is getting easier for the protagonist, Provo native Harris Thatcher, a sense of dread — just a few pages away — seems out there.

Thayer’s tale, which stretches from the mid 1940s to the mid 1950s, is told in gentle prose that almost seems to sleepwalk to the reader. Nevertheless, a lot of heavy, “big stick” stuff happens to Harris. His dad, who loved him but wasn’t a spiritual role model, dies. A few years later, Harris falls in love with a pretty classmate, Abby. Before “first love” can reach a gentle conclusion, Abby, who has frail health, dies.

Those two events are very important. Harris never seems to gain — real or unreal — a “testimony” of the Mormon faith. He’s a cultural member who does everything he’s supposed to but envies his best friend Luke, who has that type of sought-after “testimony.” There are very few pages where readers experience Luke in the first person. Perhaps that is intentional. Luke represents the outward spirituality that Harris never received from his father.

Abby’s death makes her a larger figure in Harris’ eyes than she would have likely been. She is the standard by which he compares women as he becomes an adult. 

Harris is what most of us would call a “good kid.” He loves his mom and brothers, goes to church, gets good grades and works hard at a local job, earning the respect of several role-model adults, LDS and non-LDS. His life is geared toward his mission. He’s called to serve in West Germany.

At this point, Thayer’s novel shifts a bit in tone. What was a memoir of growing up becomes on the surface a faith-promoting tale of a boy becoming a man. Harris is shocked by the devastation of postwar Germany but impressed by the faith of some members and the stoicism of a non-member couple who lost sons in the war. He adopts that stoicism to resist the temptation to slack off and becomes a model missionary, enduring much rejection to find a few converts. He witnesses a lot “spiritual experiences” while still acknowledging to himself that he lacks a testimony.

Harris returns from Germany and, almost immediately, reports to the Korean War. Luke also is drafted, although they will not be together. At this point, the reader will be in for a jolt. The novel shifts from Harris’ sometimes sad, quiet Mormon life to the horror of life on a ridge in Korea trying to survive while fighting off endless hordes of invading North Korean and Chinese soldiers. Harris’ stoicism makes him a good soldier and keeps him alive against tough odds.

But what he endures, including hand-to-hand murder and witnessing death daily, destroys his fragile testimony. No longer can he accept as truth just because it is told to him. Enduring war, and its emotional aftermath, has taken all the energy Harris can muster. He has none left for religion, which now seems unimportant against trying to survive. In a very emotional scene, Harris wonders why he deserved to live when so many others died. Among the dead is his best friend, Luke.

If I have a quibble with The Tree House, it is that Thayer continues to pile tragedy upon Harris even after the war. As Harris begins to rival Job in calamity, the novel threatens to veer into parody.

Nevertheless, The Tree House is a success. I remain impressed by the quiet, soothing style of prose Thayer uses which can still impact the reader. Even a jarring transition from the serenity of the West German mission to the slow-building terror of the Korean War is handled deftly by the author.

Although most of us don’t experience war or a 1940s European mission, if we’re honest with ourselves, we can feel empathy with Thayer’s Harris Thatcher, who oftentimes goes through the motions of what’s expected of him even though he can’t feel it inside.

-- Doug Gibson

LDS author Douglas Thayer's novel of teen’s fight to survive avalanche

The late Douglas Thayer, a BYU English professor who died in 2017 at 88, penned some pretty good books, including a memoir of his boyhood in Provo, “Hooligan,” and the novel, “The Treehouse,” a well-written but bleak-to-a-fault novel of a Mormon youth’s teen years, mission to Germany, a horrific stint in the Korean War, and his post-war life.

Thayer is a top-tier Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints novelist out there. His final novel, “Will Wonders Ever Cease: A Hopeful Novel for Mormon Mothers and Their Teenage Sons” (Zarahemla Books, 2014), is a good read that mixes an adventure with the protagonist’s stream-of-consciousness thinking as he works to avoid peril and death.

The plot involves Kyle Hooper, 15-year-old Mormon boy in Colorado who takes off in a Suburban to go skiing without his parents’ permission. Almost abruptly, Kyle’s knocked unconscious and his vehicle carried away by a massive snow avalanche.

He comes to several hours later alive thanks to the strength of the Suburban, fortified years earlier by his late grandfather. Kyle is deeply buried in snow, but lucky enough to have landed close to a stream under the avalanche. That allows him to have oxygen. Without a cell phone — it’s smashed — but a car with battery power and some food and drink, he struggles through several days trying desperately to survive and dig himself out.

Kyle is a well-developed character of Thayer’s and the reader will enjoy following along with his ingenious and courageous efforts to save himself from what looks like a long, prolonged and certain death. Mixed in with the survival efforts in this slim novel are this typical but charismatic teen’s thoughts, which run the gamut from girls, church, testimony, his very religious mother, his remote father, his less religious but very talented grandfather, a brother, Trace, who died recently, family, his best friends, and musings about how friends and family are taking his ordeal.

In one emotional scene, Kyle turns on the Suburban’s radio and learns he’s been given up for dead, and retrieval efforts won’t resume until spring.

Within these thoughts, three characters are well-formed by Thayer, an author in his 80s. Kyle’s mother, Lucille, who is originally perceived as a Mormon scold but is revealed to be refreshingly progressive on issues such as homosexuality and premarital pregnancy, and possessed of a strong will, his Grandpa Hooper, whose legacy of common sense and handyman’s know-how is used to great advantage by Kyle, and his late brother, Trace, whose last months alive Kyle recalls as he endures his own struggle to survive.

About the only thing I don’t like about this novel is the bland title, which seems more suitable for self-help or inspirational genres. But it’s a good read, compelling and thought-provoking and readers — drawn into Kyle’s plight — won’t be able to put the book down in the final pages.

-- Doug Gibson

-- Originally published at StandardNET in 2014.