Dysfunction to healing

Ask Him Why

By Catherine Ryan Hyde

Paperback: 332 pages

Publisher: Lake Union Publishing (December 15, 2015)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 1503948900

ISBN-13: 978-1503948907

Approximate Lexile: 1000

 

Publisher’s Blurb:

Ruth and her little brother, Aubrey, are just teenagers when their older brother ships off to Iraq. When Joseph returns, uninjured, only three and a half months later, Ruth is happy he is safe but also deeply worried. How can it be that her courageous big brother has been dishonorably discharged for refusing to go out on duty? Aubrey can’t believe that his hero doesn’t have very good reasons.

Yet as the horrifying details of the incident emerge, Joseph disappears. In their attempts to find him, Ruth and Aubrey discover he has a past far darker than either of them could imagine. But even as they learn more about their brother, important questions remain unanswered—why did he betray his unit, his country, and now his family? Joseph’s refusal to speak ignites a fire in young Aubrey that results in a disastrous, and public, act of rebellion.
The impact of Joseph’s fateful decision one night in Baghdad will echo for years to come, with his siblings caught between their love for him and the media’s engulfing frenzy of judgment. Will their family ever make their way back to each other and find a way to forgive?

My Thoughts:

As always, I read others reviews before writing my own. I get where some people are coming from. This is not about plot, this is about characters and family dynamics. Why would you give a book a poor review because it didn’t provide the “cliffhangers” you thought it should have? I don’t get it.

 

Okay, off the soapbox now. This is the first book I have read from this author, although I have a couple of others on my Kindle. I primarily know her, of course, from Pay it Forward, a film I love and use in some of my high school classes. From what I can tell, Hyde focuses on broken people and broken relationships, and how those people and relationships achieve at least some measure of healing.

 

And that’s what this book is about. Yes, the parents, particularly the father, come from the stock box of Horrid, Self-Centered Parents. The mother, however, changes as the book moves from past to present telling.

 

While Joseph’s mutinous action is the impetus for the action of the book, he himself is a minor character, and passes through the book relatively unchanged. The true focus of the book is his younger siblings. They are each scarred, both by their family dynamic and the social repercussions of Joseph’s action. I think Hyde’s recounting of what happens to them in their school and community because of their brother rings true, given today’s media-fed society in which people snap to instant judgement of those around anyone who, in their eyes, errs.

 

Characters along the way, as well as a healthy dose of time, help both Aubrey and Ruth along. Ruth heals much more easily than Aubrey does. Aubrey is particularly hurt by his brother’s actions, and is dysfunctional well into adulthood, while Ruth is able to achieve a fairly normal life and family.

 

Oddly, along the way, no one asks Joseph why he did what he did—hence the title of the book—and his answer, when the question finally comes up, helps the rift between him and Aubrey to finally heal.

 

Based on this book, I think I’m going to enjoy reading others by this author. It was a fairly quick read for me.

 

Possible Objectionable Material:

Dysfunctional family. Minor cursing. Disobedient kids. Social ostracism. Discussions of suicide.

 

Who Would Like this Book:

Older teens and up. Male or female. Those who like stories about people, redemption, healing, families.

 

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.