If it is catharsis she seeks, she is about to experience it, in full measure. In a novel overloaded with symbol and unlikely circumstance, Speak conjures up a cast of unattractive characters whose strange doings challenge credulity. Her optometrist turns on her with savage scorn when her one good eye explodes in blood. An elderly neighbour with whom she has exchanged few words confesses a long-stifled passion for her. Her greedy son rifles his father's financial records.
Police arrive, and a lawsuit seems pending.
If this isn't enough, Morgan's memories of her past teem mercilessly through her mind. She writes to her indifferent daughters of her own callous parents and of the times she was raped by an older brother. Pregnant and disgraced, she was stashed away in a convent, a dank institution run by cruel nuns who snatched her newborn infant, then sent her packing. Her marriage to William, a prairie lout of few redeeming qualities, was, she implies, an act of desperation. To further impede its scrambled plot-line, The Wife Tree is burdened with symbol, the most obvious the metaphor contained in the book's title.