Mikaelsen, Ben. Tree girl, a novel.

MIKAELSEN, Ben. Tree girl, a novel. Harper-Tempest. 229p. c2004. 0-06-009006-5. $6.99. JS

To quote the review of the hardcover in KLIATT, March 2004: Mikaelsen writes of events during the bitter civil war in Guatemala in the 1980s, based on a story told to him by a survivor of this war. The narrator, Gabriela, is living in a small Mayan village, attending school nearby, enfolded in a loving family, when disaster strikes. Government soldiers, little more than ragtag thugs, are convinced that the small villages in Gabriela's district are harboring rebels--communists. They murder the schoolteacher and gun down families; in the horror Gabriela escapes by hiding high up in trees. As she makes her way north to a refugee camp, she witnesses further atrocities, again hiding in a tree. At the camp, Gabriela meets a teacher named Mario and together they organize activities for the children in the camp and start a school, but eventually she and Mario face difficult decisions about the future. Mario decides to join the guerillas and return to Guatemala to help the Mayans survive the massacres by the government soldiers. Gabriela is heartbroken to be separated from Mario. The camp is filthy, the supplies are meager, yet Gabriela decides in the end to stay where she is, teaching the children, until there is peace and they can return home to Guatemala.

This is a powerful story, told simply, with fierce denunciation of the American government that supports the soldiers committing the massacres. Yet, it is Americans who keep the refugees alive in the camps, supplying food and medicine--not enough, to be sure, but something. The book will have special appeal to American teenagers whose parents came to America to escape those horrible years of civil war in Central America, and to all with an interest in that part of the world. Claire Rosser, KLIATT