The Crying Tree Diary

The Crying Tree Diary is a cradle-to-grave diary of a battered child. It is the voice of this work that makes it so compelling. At first, the voice is inexperienced, the words raw and discordant like the beginning of a storm. The storm gathers; the voice becomes rhythmic in the daily telling of the main character's life. Finally, the voice emerges as glimmer on the horizon, and the reader is assured the storm will pass when Julie Anna looks beyond the clouds and prays for peace.Julie Anna is born to an eighteen-year-old mother named Manda. Julie's father, Ron, is an enlisted man. Manda is bipolar with moments of psychosis. She is frequently beaten by her husband, Ron, when he comes home on leave. When Ron is stationed overseas, Manda and her friends like to party. They sleep with other men; they stay out all night, and they leave the children to care for themselves. Finally, Manda outright abandons the children in an apartment. Julie and her two sisters, Jessa and Abby, go to live with a loving relative for a year. They are reunited with Manda in an unexpected turn of events. Manda divorces and then marries John. John is not interested in being a father to the children but plays along. Eventually, Manda and John turn the violence on the children. Julie Anna has a brief respite in foster care but is later returned to John and Manda. Julie Anna realizes that she can no longer bear the reality of her circumstances. At age twelve, she abandons her life with a Valium overdose. Before she leaves this world, her story is told as only a child can tell. She recounts her life, starting at birth all the way to her death. Every experience is described in the present; she lives in the now-an urgency that carries her story.In the Crying Tree Diary, the reader has access to a kind of spiritual recall that will test our ideas and myths about childhood. Despite surviving a harrowing childhood, the author is an exceptionally balanced individual and very much alive. To teach and to promote peace in the modern-day family is a most worthy goal. This memoir, The Crying Tree Diary, does at least that and much, much more.