{"id":3632,"date":"2009-07-04T17:22:13","date_gmt":"2009-07-04T21:22:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookdragon.si.edu\/?p=3632"},"modified":"2014-05-19T23:52:15","modified_gmt":"2014-05-20T03:52:15","slug":"the-crying-tree-by-naseem-rakha","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/the-crying-tree-by-naseem-rakha\/","title":{"rendered":"The Crying Tree by Naseem Rakha"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Crying<\/a>In her reader’s guide at book’s end, Naseem Rakha<\/a> explains how in 1996 she was assigned to cover Oregon’s first excecution in over three decades. Once finished with the assignment, she continued to ask questions and “by far the most compelling [stories] were those told by the people who had come to terms with the murder of\u00a0 a loved one and no longer felt it necessary to seek retribution.” From that arc of the\u00a0“most desperate kind of anguish to reconciliation and even love,” Rakha began her first novel.<\/p>\n

Irene Stanley, wife of Nate and mother of Shep and Bliss, has the worst thing imaginable happen: her 15-year-old son is murdered. Wth a single shot, Daniel Robbin destroys a\u00a0quarter of the Stanley family, and the leftover mother\/father\/daughter trio remain barely glued together by the sheer hate they share against Shep’s killer.\u00a0The exhaustion of that hate nearly kills Irene, and she realizes the only salvation for her own shattered soul is forgiveness. Before she can throw herself back into darkness, she writes her son’s murderer of her grace-filled decision, beginning a correspondence that will last almost a decade.<\/p>\n

Nineteen\u00a0years after he ended Shep’s life. Robbin is finally assigned his own execution date. Tab Mason, the superintendent of the Oregon State Penitentiary, must reluctantly orchestrate Robbin’s execution;\u00a0that decision forces Mason to face the unrelenting violence he somehow survived in his own youth.<\/p>\n

Rakha deftly\u00a0interweaves the Stanleys’ bitter\u00a0journeys towards reclaiming their own lives with the story of a troubled man assigned to take a killer’s life. “Pain and grace,” one her characters utters. “Pain and grace”\u00a0combined make for an apt\u00a0summary of\u00a0Rakha’s exquisite debut.<\/p>\n

Be prepared for some heartbreaking tears; and,\u00a0if you’re a mother, you’ll never be able to hear Silent Night, <\/em>especially the part about “mother and child,” quite the same way again.<\/p>\n

Readers<\/strong>: Adult<\/p>\n

Published<\/strong>: 2009<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In her reader’s guide at book’s end, Naseem Rakha explains how in 1996 she was assigned to cover Oregon’s first excecution in over three decades. Once finished with the assignment, she continued to ask questions and “by far the most compelling [stories] were those told…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29629,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6,60,18],"tags":[6608,2560,75,10,189,13,129,2561,39,44],"class_list":["post-3632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-adult-readers","category-fiction","category-nonethnic-specific","category-south-asian-american","tag-bookdragon","tag-crying-tree","tag-death","tag-family","tag-father-son-relationship","tag-love","tag-mother-daughter-relationship","tag-naseem-rakha","tag-parent-child-relationship","tag-siblings"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Crying Tree by Naseem Rakha - BookDragon<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/the-crying-tree-by-naseem-rakha\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Crying Tree by Naseem Rakha - BookDragon\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In her reader’s guide at book’s end, Naseem Rakha explains how in 1996 she was assigned to cover Oregon’s first excecution in over three decades. 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