‘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

Doctrine on children who die fulfills a primal desire for Latter-day Saint parents

The second-hardest thing I have ever done is hold my infant son in my arms and watch Ray die. The hardest task for my wife and me were allowing Ray to die without a fight. He was born in 2000 with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, which meant that his heart wouldn’t function on its own. After reviewing the doctors’ options, which involved a high expectation of pain for Ray and a survival chance that a dispassionate observer would rate as virtually nil, we allowed our son to die.


A key advantage of grief is that it allows sorrow to be put into perspective. The months before Ray’s birth, when he was diagnosed, and several months to years after his short life, were very difficult. Moments intended for matrimonial passion become a time for tears when you look into your spouse’s eyes and know what both of you are thinking of. You look at children born at the same time as Ray and resist an impulse of bitter envy. You mentally plug your ears to condolences that your child “was too pure for the world” or vain exclamations from the pulpit of how prayer saved so and so’s child.

But grief is a positive. With time, it allows comprehension to sink in that what happened to your child happens to many, many others every year. You realize that 24 hours with a healthy baby makes you very lucky compared to the countless others left to die too early in terrifying circumstances, with no one to comfort them. If you don’t understand that life’s not fair, that our Creator doesn’t play favorites, then grief can turn you into a selfish, self-pitying person — and that’s a bigger shame than the loss of an innocent.

My wife and I do cling to a faith-based belief that others may call fantasy. We’re LDS, and we regard Joseph Smith as a prophet. When Smith was alive, he taught this, according to a 1918 edition of The Improvement Era: 

President Joseph F. Smith, the sixth President of the Church, reported: ‘Joseph Smith taught the doctrine that the infant child that was laid away in death would come up in the resurrection as a child; and, pointing to the mother of a lifeless child, he said to her: ‘You will have the joy, the pleasure and satisfaction of nurturing this child, after its resurrection, until it reaches the full stature of its spirit.’ …

"In 1854, I met with my aunt [Agnes Smith], the wife of my uncle, Don Carlos Smith, who was the mother of that little girl [Sophronia] that Joseph Smith, the Prophet, was speaking about, when he told the mother that she should have the joy, the pleasure, and the satisfaction of rearing that child, after the resurrection, until it reached the full stature of its spirit; and that it would be a far greater joy than she could possibly have in mortality, because she would be free from the sorrow and fear and disabilities of mortal life, and she would know more than she could know in this life. I met that widow, the mother of that child, and she told me this circumstance and bore testimony to me that this was what the Prophet Joseph Smith said when he was speaking at the funeral of her little daughter."

I choose to believe that I, with many other happy parents, will raise children who died too soon. I’m not convinced of that because a group of retired businessmen say it. I base it on my faith in a loving God and a primal desire to have that privilege. 

But if I’m wrong, I refuse to be disappointed. The 24 hours my wife and I had with Ray was another blessing we will always thank God for.


-- Doug Gibson

Originally published at StandardNET in 2010

LDS doctrine on children who die fulfills a primal desire

The second-hardest thing I have ever done is hold my infant son in my arms and watch Ray die. The hardest task for my wife and me were allowing Ray to die without a fight. He was born in 2000 with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, which meant that his heart wouldn’t function on its own. After reviewing the doctors’ options, which involved a high expectation of pain for Ray and a survival chance that a dispassionate observer would rate as virtually nil, we allowed our son to die.


A key advantage of grief is that it allows sorrow to be put into perspective. The months before Ray’s birth, when he was diagnosed, and several months to years after his short life, were very difficult. Moments intended for matrimonial passion become a time for tears when you look into your spouse’s eyes and know what both of you are thinking of. You look at children born at the same time as Ray and resist an impulse of bitter envy. You mentally plug your ears to condolences that your child “was too pure for the world” or vain exclamations from the pulpit of how prayer saved so and so’s child.

But grief is a positive. With time, it allows comprehension to sink in that what happened to your child happens to many, many others every year. You realize that 24 hours with a healthy baby makes you very lucky compared to the countless others left to die too early in terrifying circumstances, with no one to comfort them. If you don’t understand that life’s not fair, that our Creator doesn’t play favorites, then grief can turn you into a selfish, self-pitying person — and that’s a bigger shame than the loss of an innocent.

My wife and I do cling to a faith-based belief that others may call fantasy. We’re LDS, and we regard Joseph Smith as a prophet. When Smith was alive, he taught this, according to a 1918 edition of The Improvement Era: 

President Joseph F. Smith, the sixth President of the Church, reported: ‘Joseph Smith taught the doctrine that the infant child that was laid away in death would come up in the resurrection as a child; and, pointing to the mother of a lifeless child, he said to her: ‘You will have the joy, the pleasure and satisfaction of nurturing this child, after its resurrection, until it reaches the full stature of its spirit.’ …

"In 1854, I met with my aunt [Agnes Smith], the wife of my uncle, Don Carlos Smith, who was the mother of that little girl [Sophronia] that Joseph Smith, the Prophet, was speaking about, when he told the mother that she should have the joy, the pleasure, and the satisfaction of rearing that child, after the resurrection, until it reached the full stature of its spirit; and that it would be a far greater joy than she could possibly have in mortality, because she would be free from the sorrow and fear and disabilities of mortal life, and she would know more than she could know in this life. I met that widow, the mother of that child, and she told me this circumstance and bore testimony to me that this was what the Prophet Joseph Smith said when he was speaking at the funeral of her little daughter."

I choose to believe that I, with many other happy parents, will raise children who died too soon. I’m not convinced of that because a group of retired businessmen say it. I base it on my faith in a loving God and a primal desire to have that privilege. 

But if I’m wrong, I refuse to be disappointed. The 24 hours my wife and I had with Ray was another blessing we will always thank God for.


-- Doug Gibson

Originally published at StandardNET in 2010