short stuff
by Linda McThrall, editor

There is always a little luck involved in finding a good book. I’ve always been big lucky when it comes to finding books I love.

The Crying Tree by Naseem Rakha is an exquisite story. Spare and neat, The Crying Tree is about forgiveness. And not just any forgiveness but that of a mother forgiving the murderer of her only son.

The story is so terrible, so wrenching, so gripping you can’t let it go.

While it is all that, it is also enormous in its understanding of how a mother could forgive someone for something so horrendous. Rakha knew how to tell that story, and she makes her reader believe it.

Each step of the book leads so beautifully to the next step that there are no natural stops when you have to go to bed or go to work or whatever task takes you away from this story. You really want to keep reading it – maybe for the rest of your life.

Irene Stanley, the mother of the murdered boy, Shep, likely is someone you have known from the Midwest. Strong, stoic, pragmatic, she carries her grief as a weapon. Her husband Nate, a man’s man but a man who appeals to his community and his family swallows his grief so thoroughly that there is an underlying sense of palpable hatred each time he appears in the book. Their surviving daughter, Bliss, answers the death of her brother by becoming a prosecutor, living each day with the compulsion to put away the bad guys once and for all.

As the story unravels – and unravel it does – toward a powerful ending that should floor you when you’re done. The murderer does not get off of death row. He is executed despite evidence and Irene’s own attempt to change the will of the courts and the system itself as well as the mind of the killer. But that is not what astonishes.

This debut novel is deserving of every high accolade for its very use of the language. Rakha has a background as a journalist. While she has worked in broadcasting and not in the print side of things, she has the light touch of a true wordsmith. It is with that style, Rakha brings you to your knees at the end.

For writing the book, for taking you on a journey through emotions few will experience and for finishing it in such a profound way – just those reasons are enough to read this book.

And when you finish it, you will feel lucky you found this book. It is a treasure.

The Crying Tree
By Naseem Rakha
Random House, 2009
$22.95

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When you live in a cold, cloudy climate, January is the hardest month of all. All the excitement of the holidays is over, the bills are probably rolling in, and there is just nothing to do.

In Arizona, there are a million things to do through December. I wish all these things could be spread throughout the year. Of course, these holiday events wouldn’t exactly fit in to an atmosphere of 130 degrees, but when we’re in the dog days of summer, it can be so B-0-R-I-N-G. It would be great to have something fun to do in mid-July.

This issue of Let's Go! is filled with activities for the month of December. And we don’t have to worry about the January doldrums here. There will be almost as many things to do in the next few months as there is in December. So buckle up and enjoy it all. And have a wonderful holiday season.