‘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

Why is prayer defined as a genie who grants selective pleas?

 

With some edits, originally published in 2012 at StandardBlogs

Why do so many church lessons about the power of prayer always have to follow this format: Either the man upstairs magisterially — like a genie — grants your frantic plea for personal safety or personal betterment, or he prompts you, with a warm fuzzy feeling, to check on somebody or something, or pull over on the highway, etc., thereby sparing you or a loved one(s) an unfortunate accident or death.

Why can’t the power of prayer be defined as a tool that allows you to offer to God your gratitude for just being on earth, and having prayer as a component — along with Scripture study and following the Golden Rule, etc. — that helps make you a better person? Why does its power have to be attached with “believe-it-or-not” testimonials that would sound cheesy even on a late-night infomercial?

I’m not making this stuff up. I recall a mostly useful church lesson on the power of prayer. Prayer is a device, that if you value it, can get you through the night, or a life, if needed. But it’s not a “get-out-of jail-free card.” I concede that two “real-life” examples of prayer’s power may not be intended to show that God plays favorites, but I can see how the countless unfortunates who didn’t get a miraculous hand from God may feel otherwise.

The first involved a young man who went to swim beyond the breakers in the Southern California. Not surprisingly, the foolish swimmer, presumably alone, was carried away by high waves. About to drown, he prayed furiously to God that he could clutch the barnacle-encrusted pier pillar he was moving toward. Despite cutting himself, he hung on to the log pillar and was able to pray himself to shallow water. Prayer saved him is the moral of the story.

Or it could be that God looks after fools. I was a lifeguard a long time ago, and I do know that anyone who goes into deep water with waves alone is a fool. Did prayer save that man? I don’t believe so. My God respects natural law. Only a person who has never carried in — too late — a drowning victim to shore would believe such Pabulum that was pitched in a an ecclesiastical manual. Millions of unfortunates — foolish or otherwise — who have drowned no doubt furiously prayed for deliverance until incoming water silenced their pleas.

The second example of prayer’s power involved the story of a father who suddenly felt inspired to pray for his young toddler son. Later, dad learned that junior had fallen into the river. Just before the youngster was to be permanently thrust under water and slashed and brutalized by stones and rocks, a wave, presto, erupted out of thin air, lifting the lucky toddler out of the water and onto the shore. Prayer saves the lucky one again!

But what of the prayers from fathers, mothers, family members and friends when an unfortunate, baby, toddler, or older individual, falls into the water or slips under a raging river or stream? Or those carried by waves into the sea with loved ones within eyesight? These tragedies -- and other types -- happen every year. Were their prayers less favored, or important? Did Y survive a deadly disease instead of X when the prayers for both were equally fervent, and desperate?

The late Christopher Hitchens was no fan of prayer, I imagine, but he did understand gratitude. To survive the many obstacles that nature puts to us from the time we are conceived until birth is quite a gift, he wrote. To give thanks for every second of the gift of life is appropriate. To ask God to look after you, even protect you from harm, is appropriate. To ask God to give you the strength to survive adversity is even better. 

I recall a man cited prayer as a contributing factor to his finding the body of a toddler who drowned in 2012, thereby bringing peace to his grieving family. That I can believe.

I’m sure most of us, if in a desperate situation, will pray to God for deliverance. That is human nature. If we stop for a hamburger and miss being a participant in a tragic event because of that, we may foolishly think it was divine grace that led us to the burger.

But keep such boasting to yourself, and please omit it from religious lesson manuals.

-- Doug Gibson