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Bitter Harvest
Paula Sharp's "Crows Over a Wheatfield."
By Julie Birnbaum
DECEMBER 15, 1997:
Domestic violence has often risen to the top of the news in the
past decade, and high-profile cases have made the public more
aware of the inequities within the justice and support systems.
Still, victims of domestic violence encounter biases in many sectors;
only recently did the federal legislature introduce the Victims
of Abuse Protection Act, a bill to protect women from discrimination
by insurance companies. (The bill, which would prevent the companies
from using a history of domestic violence as criteria for denying
coverage or raising premiums, has not yet been passed.) Crows
Over a Wheatfield takes on the issue of domestic violence
in a compelling portrayal of the system's often disturbingly
discriminatory handling of women and children in divorce and custody
cases.
Written by Paula Sharp, a young criminal defense attorney, the
remarkable novel combines a clear, often poetic narrative with
a keen legal sensibility. The story follows Melanie Ratleer from
her childhood in an abusive home in rural Wisconsin to an adulthood
absorbed in the law and back home again. In the 30 years that
it covers, Melanie and her brother, Matt, react to the violence
and oppression of their past in dramatically different ways: Melanie
seeks control by quietly excelling in her field and becoming a
federally-appointed judge, while Matt succumbs to mental illness.
The two cross paths with Mildred Steck, a bright, independent
woman who is trapped and disillusioned by the prejudices of a
small-town court after she and her young son are abused by her
manipulative husband. Mildred takes the law into her own hands,
escapes the system and builds an underground railroad to help
women and children in similar situations to escape. Along the
way, Melanie is forced to re-examine the legal system that she
has come to represent and account for a lifetime spent buried
in it. Matt, through working with Mildred and the underground
railroad, is able to confront the pain of his past and come to
a more lucid understanding about its effect on his life.
The novel's power comes largely from Sharp's natural, well-drawn
characters, who alternately draw strength from their small-town
communities and wide, flat landscape and feel repressed by those
same elements. Many of the characters are misfits somehow: Melanie's
family is ostracized because of her intimidating father, a well-known
criminal defense attorney, while Mildred's family is ostracized
because of her mother's mental illness and her father's liberal
views as minister of a Unitarian Church and director of a halfway
house for the mentally ill.
Crows Over a Wheatfield is unique in that it combines several
normally distinct styles with remarkable success. It is a family
epic within unconventional families, a courtroom drama within
insular Wisconsin. The issue is serious and the message is clear,
yet Sharp's narrative is surprisingly lyrical and warm, and the
serious topic is treated with an ironic, dry humor. Also, unlike
some works that concentrate on women to the exclusion of three-dimensional
male characters, Sharp develops realistic characters of both sexes.
The characters' transformations are entirely believable because
they are complex, expressed on both psychological and symbolic
levels. In the end, the wheatfields that surround them come to
be charged with meaning, representative of the change that has
taken place.
At the start of the novel, the wheat fields remind Melanie as
a little girl of her desolation and vulnerability: "The land's
flat vastness threatens that the world will go on endlessly the
same, no matter how far you journey, that there is no escaping
where you are."
The final note of the work, however, is one of empowerment. Though
the problem of the law's frequently unjust treatment of women
in domestic violence cases remains, Mildred's underground railroad
subverts the court system and is triumphant. The reader is left
with the image of the wheat fields burning: "The wheat felt
what it was to burn fervently, to know an anger that turned into
exhilaration and joy." Sharp's brilliant image is characteristic
of the course of the novel as a whole, a transcendence of the
hurt and anger of domestic violence to create a joyful brand of
lawless justice. (Washington Square Press, paper, $14)
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