Title: Splitting Harriet
Author: Tamara Leigh
Copyright Date: 2007
Publisher: Multnomah Books
Genre: Christian Fiction
Does screwing up once mean you’re a screw up forever? Harriet
grew up a preacher’s kid. She was innocent, naïve, and protected from the
conniving aspects of human nature until a change in her father’s church led to a
near split of the congregation. The conflict in the congregation opened Harriet’s
eyes to the reality that kindness does not always reign supreme. In response, she
escaped the shelter of her upbringing and went hellcat rebellious as a teen.
Years later, Harriet is sober and employed part-time as a
waitress and part-time as the director of women’s ministry at First Grace
church in Franklin, Tennessee. The reformed Harriet is obsessed with keeping
her life pure and organized. She’s twenty seven years old, yet her social
circle is limited to the dinner by five, in bed by eight retiree crowd at the church-owned
trailer park where she lives. All is June Cleaver tidy for Harriet until a new
tattooed resident, Maddox, rolls in on his motorcycle and disrupts her
manicured world. Maddox’s presence pushes Harriet to wrestle with the issues
that brought her to her knees as a teen.
Along the path of Harriet’s personal transformation is the
infamous love triangle plot feature. I won’t rant again on this overused feature, but will admit that Leigh deserves kudos
on how she portrayed Harriet’s love triangle. Absent were the typical angsty
good guy versus bad guy decisions to be made; decisions that make otherwise
brave heroines seem bipolar at best and more often portray them as flighty and
undeserving of love (alright, a tiny
rant). Instead, Leigh employs the love triangle to help Harriet discover
the goodness within her.
Forgiveness is the central theme of Splitting Harriet. The liberating power of forgiveness is a common leitmotif
in literature. Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese, The Perks of Being a
Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, and Requiem by Lauren Oliver also analyze how
holding onto the past and not forgiving oneself or others can prevent a person from
loving completely. Leigh takes the theme further by adding that forgiveness is
repeatable, not a one and done activity. When Maddox becomes frustrated with Harriet’s
inability to realize that forgiveness is infinite, he exclaims “You have to allow that you’re going to
stumble like the rest of us…”. As a
person who stumbles often, his line is my favorite in the story.
The novel is scripture heavy. If you’re not a regular reader
of Christian lit (I’m not), this may
be a hurdle for you. It was for me. I groaned when I read the first chapter. It
wasn't the writing, which is respectable, but the content. I was raised Christian
and believe in the tenets of Christianity, but not the evangelism of it. Beating
anyone with fists or scripture has never proved effective in changing people’s
beliefs.
Regardless of the blatant theological lectures, Leigh’s beach-reading
story bolstered my conviction that the purpose of religion is to teach us to
love, to love ourselves and each other.
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