The Gospel of Trees: A Memoir

By Apricot Irving 

Simon and Schuster     2018

384 pages     Memoir

Apricot Irving looks back at her life as a child of missionaries in Haiti in the 1980s and 1990s in her memoir, The Gospel of Trees.. Her father, Jon, was an agronomist and went to Haiti to reforest the country. Sometimes his efforts were of little help, and his resulting anger and frustration led to a tumultuous family life. 

The family first went to Haiti when the three girls, Apricot, Meadow, and Rose were quite young; Apricot was six. Jon traveled the countryside preaching the gospel of agronomy to reluctant farmers; his wife, Flip, taught school in the Jericho School, which was where the missionary children went to school. 

 Through those years and from behind the walls of the missionary compound, the family experienced the turmoil that was Haiti —both political turmoil and natural turmoil.

This is how Irving describes her book:  “It’s a memoir in many voices about a fractured family finding their way back to each other through words. It’s a meditation on beauty in a broken world, loss and privilege, love and failure, trees and why they matter. It bears witness to the defiant beauty of an undefeated country.”

Apricot kept a journal of her growing-up years in Haiti as did each of her parents. Her grandmother kept the letters that the family wrote home, and Apricot also had access to the newsletters that were written by the missionaries to the churches back home that sponsored them. When she gained access to this treasure-trove of information as an adult, she discovered that the narratives were not at all the same. The missionary newsletters told of a desperately poor country, in need of financial help, but the letters were always upbeat—changes were happening, progress was being made, lives were being saved at the hospital. Flip’s letters and journals were poignant and lonely. After one tour of duty, she didn’t want to be there anymore. She wanted to go home. Apricot’s narratives grew, as she grew, from eager child to resentful teenager.

She says of the experience: “In church circles, being a missionary was almost as good as being a movie star.” On the other hand, the altruism of the mission director, the other missionaries, including her father, bred a type of hierarchy that could lead to devastation, resentment, and political complicity. Missionaries lived behind high walls. As Irving grew in understanding, she came to be resentful of the zeal that tries to change what can’t be changed. “God was already here.” Also: “Always it was the same: We placed ourselves, like heroes, at the center of the story. As if it was our destiny to save Haiti. What we couldn’t seem to understand was that Haiti needed our respect, not another failed rescue mission.”

Irving returned in 2010 after a devastating earthquake to report for the radio show, “This American Life.” It was this experience that encouraged her to write up her memories, and her understandings, which had grown tremendously over the years. Her parents return time and again to try to help the Haitians solve their problems. Her parents were there yet again when Apricot came to report. Her realistic look at her parents, her father’s “savior” complex, and the difficulties of the life that they lived—along with the moments of grace and beauty—make for compelling reading.  Through her writing, I understood Apricot’s plight as a child and teenager, and  how her understanding grew when she returned. Certainly, she understood the reasons why her family wasn’t the “perfect” missionary family.

As I read The Gospel of Trees, I remembered Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, which, although fiction, has a similar feel to Irving’s book. Recently, as well, I was exposed to a book called Protestants Abroad: How Missionaries Tried to Change the World, but Changed America. David Hollinger, the author, claims that the American opinion of Asia was changed dramatically by the children of the missionaries who served in Asian countries.

Irving makes the missionary experience much more human than divine.

Review in the Wall Street Journal.