Tree Girl

This true account comes from Gabriela, a survivor of the Guatemalan Civil War of the 1980s. Amber Sealey brings a matter-of-fact practicality to Gabriela, a 14-year-old girl who can climb higher than any boy in her Mayan village. Climbing trees saves her when the soldiers come to brutalize her village. She escapes and goes to a refugee camp, but the soldiers come again, and, again from high in the trees, she observes the beating, rape, and murder of innocents. Ben Mikaelsen's simple, direct language and Sealey's passionless voice produce a much-needed disconnect between the listener and the atrocities described. Sealey doesn't sensationalize, yet she manages to impart the horrors Gabriela witnesses, her resentment against the American government for supporting the soldiers, and her survivor's guilt. Grim, graphic, and powerful. S.J.H. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine