The Surrender Tree

by Margarita Engle

[leahrosereads]

THE SURRENDER TREE is a book that's completely outside of my normal wheel house. It's historical fiction, written in verse form, about wars I knew absolutely nothing about. But it was so powerful.

Each page (for the most part) follows one of the following characters:
- Rosa: a freed slave healer
- Jose: Rosa's husband, healer, and rebel
- Lieutenant Death: a slavehunter
- Silvia: an orphan and healer-in-training

And it follows the characters through the Ten Years' War, Little War, and War of Independence for Cuba. It's heartbreaking to see what Rosa, Jose, and the rebels go through for freedom and my soul broke repeatedly while following them on their journeys. What these rebels had to go through for their freedom will stay with me forever.

Every line of every poem had impact. My book is flagged with lines that hit me so hard that I had to stop for a moment and make sure that their meaning wasn't lost on me for reading too fast or being too engrossed in the story.


I'm going to read more about these wars and the history, and I am planning on re-reading this book once I'm more familiar with it all. I think it'll hit me even harder than it already has.