My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The Eagle Tree, which I received as part of Amazon’s Kindle first program, ended up being a very enjoyable and unique read.
The story is centered on and told by Peter March Wong, a teenage autistic boy in Olympia, Washington who has a passion and love for trees. Because of the narrator’s love for trees, and presumably the manner in which his autism manifests itself, as a reader you become immersed in March’s world - understanding how he relates to trees, while they are calming and make sense to him, and how they center his life. Outside of March’s narrating his “obsession” with trees, and particularly the “Eagle Tree” that he spots upon first moving to his new home, the plot of the novel is emotional and, for lack of a better word, real. March has moved with his Mom to their new house, while his Dad, for reasons generally left unspoken throughout the course of the novel, moved to Arizona (where there are no trees). One of the primary questions in the novel, that March generally seems unaware of, is a sort of commitment hearing where it will be determined if March’s mother is capable of caring for March based on the severity (or manner of manifestation) of March’s autism.
Like similar novels I have read that I have such a unique narrator (The Curious Incident of the Dog in Night-Time immediately comes to mind), part of what makes the novel a worthwhile read is the empathy and appreciation the reader can get for what it means to be anywhere on the autism spectrum, and what it means to be familiy for those individuals. The author, whose background includes some work with kids on the spectrum, does an excellent job of portraying March, as being less defined by his autism diagnoses, and more defined by other things - his love of trees for one, but also as a complicated emerging young man who is not only learning how to be a man, but doing so in a world that makes little sense to him.
Ultimately, the book was very enjoyable; it was easy to read, had good pacing, and had a primary character that you root for, you feel for, and come to appreciate and understand in new and better ways.
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