When Crickets Cry (Novel)

Author: Charles Martin
Category: Fiction
Publisher: Westbow
Format: Paperback
Pub Date: April 2006
Price: $14.99
ISBN: 1595540547

Head vs. Heart: The Crisis of Purpose

Charles Martin’s third book, When Crickets Cry: A Novel of the Heart, serves as a treatise on what happens when intellect and faith fight for domination and ultimately come to peace as a complete whole—an undeniable synergistic interdependence between commonly “opposing� spheres of influence.

At its core this book explores the difference between knowledge of the head and knowledge of the heart. Head knowledge is an intellectual endeavor. Information is found, studied, absorbed, and filed away in the proper filing cabinet of the brain to be retrieved when required. A person with a lot of head knowledge (particularly in one specific area) is called an expert and often becomes an icon of society who is sought for his or her expertise—a walking encyclopedia so to speak or, as present day terminology defines, a talking head. Head knowledge is easy to assess; the information is there or it is not. Some people are gifted in combining head knowledge with a particular skill or talent that raises them above the seemingly average person.

Heart knowledge, on the other hand, is a very tricky proposition. Heart knowledge is a spiritual awakening; the information isn’t just filed away for periodic use, but becomes life, permeating every aspect of existence and causing the focus of life to change. Heart knowledge is extremely difficult to assess because motives can be judged but not proven; actions and words are the only way to observe who a person is and what makes that person tick. Because of the struggle between head and heart, intellect and spirit, tangible and intangible, heart knowledge is often considered less valuable, and the person possessing such treasure often written of as either fanatical, misled, or completely unhinged. As individuals, we tend to give more credence to head knowledge than heart knowledge because we equate the latter with touchy-feely emotional nonsense used as a crutch to get through life. People want to be able to prove everything, but that just isn’t how life always works. There are things that have to be taken on faith.

As a young boy, Reese falls in love with the little girl next door, Emma, whose life is ruled by a physical heart, which has a hole. Knowing that this will eventually kill her, he vows to become her savior by learning everything he possibly can about hearts…the science. He dedicates his life to becoming the best heart surgeon known to mankind so that he can “fix� Emma when his education is complete. He believes with absolute passion that this is the purpose to which God has called him. After seven years of marriage, the completion of medical school, and the knowledge that he is the best thoracic surgeon in the present world, Emma’s defective heart decides that it is time to stop. Away from medical facilities, Reese’s attempts to save her prove futile and he plunges into a deep crisis of faith, walking away from a world who needs him, isolating himself and changing his purpose to becoming a boat builder. He couldn’t save Emma, so he won’t save anybody.

Emma had tried to balance Reese by helping him to understand that science and faith are not mutually exclusive. She tried to help him see that perhaps his purpose in life was not to save just her (or even her at all), but many. Emma more than proved to Reese that though her physical heart might be defective, her spiritual heart was more whole than his. In his singleness of purpose, Reese failed to see God’s forest of hearts for the tree that was Emma; consequently, his head knowledge never combined with his heart to make a whole person. Like most of us, Reese did not understand that he was a piece in a very large puzzle—a piece that must take its proper place or cause the picture to have a hole. He failed to understand that everyone has a purpose and that Emma’s was to encourage him and love him toward his. Eventually, it took a little girl, with exactly the same problem as Emma’s, to teach Reese the truth of meaning and purpose through the combined knowledge of head and heart. In the end, Reese does become whole with intellect and faith melded together.

This book would make an excellent summer “day at the beach� or “week at the cabin� read. Charles martin has a flair for description and an obvious love for the South, and his voice is very gentle and sincere. It conveys the mind of a deep thinking person who has probably struggled with the same issues that his characters have—which may not be so surprising since these issues are fairly universal to mankind.

The central character in the novel is a man, but men are not likely to be drawn to this book because the arrow of its compass swings just a little too far toward fodder for the Lifetime Channel and Christian romance novels. At times Martin allows himself to become a little too trite and over-stated, even overly dramatic, to the point that you can hear the music swelling to rend your heart (no pun intended). He also cannot resist the temptation to preach on subjects that he holds particularly dear. For instance, in a conversation with a young homeless man that Reese befriends, there is quite a lesson on pornography. But despite all that, it is really too bad that the market targeted seems to be Christian women who will probably feel as I did while reading the book. I found myself wanting to “fix� this incomplete man rather than look more deeply at myself, and I’m pretty sure that that was not Charles Martin’s intent.

Time provides a disorientation difficulty in several of the chapters. Martin does not seem to have mastered (at least in this book) the art of moving seamlessly around back and forth from flashback to present. Several chapters will take place in the past and then “Wham!� with a turn of the page the reader is back in the present but doesn’t realize it until a couple of paragraphs have been read. This is a bit jarring and slightly ruins the continuity of the story in several places.

Cici, Martin’s adult female main character, vacillates between portrayals as a strong, independent woman to a weak, needy woman who constantly requires rescue. It’s almost as if Charles Martin cannot decide which values he finds more attractive in a woman or perhaps he likes elements of both. But then, this novel is steeped in Southern culture (set in Georgia) where women are still believed to be of a more delicate and sensitive nature than men, and Charles Martin is a Southern gentleman.