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The Tree You Come Home To
One writer’s search for meaning, one family’s journey to healing...
Jane Olmsted’s family didn’t adhere to the characteristics that the media portrays for those struggling with mental illness and addiction. Doctors, attorneys, and social workers repeatedly told Jane and her husband that they weren’t used to working with “families like yours.” The Tree You Come Home To tells the story of Jane’s family’s struggle with mental illness, addiction, and the crises that followed the murder of her youngest son. It can provide hope and comfort to those facing similar situations and encourage empathy and compassion in those who haven’t.
“Jane Olmsted's meticulously detailed account is a wake-up call for schools, churches, social workers, legislators, psychologists, medical doctors, and all those engaged with the mental and emotional wellness of at-risk youth.”
—Sena Jeter Naslund, Ph.D., author of Ahab's Wife and others
“Jane Olmsted weaves together life and death, tragedy, and moments of grace in this extraordinary memoir on the murder of her youngest son. In luminous writing, Olmsted plumbs the complex and fluctuating dynamics of family, motherhood, grief, and faith while forging a path towards healing.”
Jane Olmsted’s family didn’t adhere to the characteristics that the media portrays for those struggling with mental illness and addiction. Doctors, attorneys, and social workers repeatedly told Jane and her husband that they weren’t used to working with “families like yours.” The Tree You Come Home To tells the story of Jane’s family’s struggle with mental illness, addiction, and the crises that followed the murder of her youngest son. It can provide hope and comfort to those facing similar situations and encourage empathy and compassion in those who haven’t.
“Jane Olmsted's meticulously detailed account is a wake-up call for schools, churches, social workers, legislators, psychologists, medical doctors, and all those engaged with the mental and emotional wellness of at-risk youth.”
—Sena Jeter Naslund, Ph.D., author of Ahab's Wife and others
“Jane Olmsted weaves together life and death, tragedy, and moments of grace in this extraordinary memoir on the murder of her youngest son. In luminous writing, Olmsted plumbs the complex and fluctuating dynamics of family, motherhood, grief, and faith while forging a path towards healing.”
261 pages, Paperback
Published December 15, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 25, 2022
All the feels
Speaks to the complicated dynamics of family with a sense of tenderness and love that is hard to capture in words. These are feelings that are universal to the human experience yet also so difficult to express for most. Olmsted does it with grace, thoughtfulness, and a light touch of humor that is so perfect.
The Tree you Come Home to by Jane Olmsted is a memoir about her family’s struggles with addiction, mental illness, and ultimately grief when Olmsted’s youngest son, Casey, was murdered. This memoir will be especially poignant for parents. Olmsted explores the dynamics between children and parents, telling the story of Olmsted’s own three sons while also recalling memories of her own mother.
About her mother, Olmsted writes, “And so, Mom gave me her very best gift. She showed me that loyalty is a force so powerful that it can transform guilt into forgiveness and shame into a sense of justice. Whatever range of emotions we feel in the wake of the talents and passions that define our parents, what we’re really grateful for is the sort of things any parent can manage, at least theoretically: to be alchemists of the heart for us turning the base metals of our lives into gold.”
I can cry reading this paragraph now! While Olmsted’s story is incredibly sad, it also conveys a sense of hope as she journeys from devastating loss to a way forward. Seriously, so beautifully written and powerful.
Recommend to any person with a beating heart!
Speaks to the complicated dynamics of family with a sense of tenderness and love that is hard to capture in words. These are feelings that are universal to the human experience yet also so difficult to express for most. Olmsted does it with grace, thoughtfulness, and a light touch of humor that is so perfect.
The Tree you Come Home to by Jane Olmsted is a memoir about her family’s struggles with addiction, mental illness, and ultimately grief when Olmsted’s youngest son, Casey, was murdered. This memoir will be especially poignant for parents. Olmsted explores the dynamics between children and parents, telling the story of Olmsted’s own three sons while also recalling memories of her own mother.
About her mother, Olmsted writes, “And so, Mom gave me her very best gift. She showed me that loyalty is a force so powerful that it can transform guilt into forgiveness and shame into a sense of justice. Whatever range of emotions we feel in the wake of the talents and passions that define our parents, what we’re really grateful for is the sort of things any parent can manage, at least theoretically: to be alchemists of the heart for us turning the base metals of our lives into gold.”
I can cry reading this paragraph now! While Olmsted’s story is incredibly sad, it also conveys a sense of hope as she journeys from devastating loss to a way forward. Seriously, so beautifully written and powerful.
Recommend to any person with a beating heart!
February 21, 2022
Jane Olmsted’s new memoir The Tree We Come Home To tells the story of the murder of her youngest son, Casey Olmsted, at the age of 20. In breathtaking detail, Olmsted describes the events that led to Casey’s death, the circumstances of his murder, as well as the torturous years that followed, including the investigation, trial, and sentencing of his killer. In doing so, she asks the question: how does one go on after such a tragedy? The author’s longing is palpable: “I want to call out, now what? Where is the peace of mind? When can I see my boy and hold him?” Olmsted succeeds at putting the reader directly inside her grief-stricken shoes. We feel her pain, her heartbreak, in a way that is all too real.
On October 26, 2009, Casey Olmsted got into a heated argument with 18-year-old Patrick Burns over a young woman they both knew. Infuriated by their text messages, Casey drove out to Burns’ home to confront him. When Patrick saw Casey pulling up in front of his house, he grabbed a pistol and headed for the door. But his father, Edmund Leland Burns, snatched the gun from his son and proceeded to shoot in the direction of the car four times even though an unarmed Casey was already pulling away. Olmsted’s anguish over this scene is gut-wrenching: “I am sick with the thought of him driving away, knowing or not knowing what hit him, aware or not aware as the car rolled into the ditch. Alone, my poor boy, alone.”
The Tree We Come Home To is Olmsted’s attempt to examine this tragic incident from every angle, trying to make sense of a senseless crime. The author offers an unflinching look at formative moments in Casey’s history and includes those memories alongside letters, journal entries, memorials, songs, poems, and words from everyone in their extended family, including Casey himself. The result is something far greater than the sum of its parts. It’s a heartbreaking and poignant portrait of loss.
Reading Casey’s words on the page is a powerful experience, a raising of the dead, if you will, and the reader can’t help but be moved by Casey’s lifelong desire to pull himself out of a downward spiral fueled by addiction, insecurity, and violence: “I know I’ve messed up a lot. It is not too late but could never be soon enough.” Olmsted’s memoir functions as a character study of a young man who, like many people his age, struggled to find his way in the world.
Casey is depicted by his mother as a person who felt things—both love and anger—with great intensity as well as a person who never learned to harness those emotions. The reader simultaneously wants to hug Casey and to shake him. But his mother also shows him to be a person who naturally put others at ease, most especially his niece, Omni, and his daughter, Leah. A cousin described him as “someone you could be still with.”
At the same time, Olmsted offers an unflinching look at herself and everyone in the family: “It’s hard to acknowledge that he was as wounded as he was, or that I am so flawed.” Olmsted’s dismantling of her family’s dysfunction forces the reader to consider their own history, asking themselves the same questions the author asks herself: What could I have done differently? What could I do better? How can I learn from this going forward?
Much like Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, Olmsted’s memoir is a book about contemplation, a true study of the ontological nature of being. What is the meaning of life? Why are we here? What can we do with the little time we have? “I think a lot about being dead myself,” Olmsted writes. “Whether I will finish anything I’ve started and what it means if it ends up not mattering to anyone. What ‘good energy’ have I put into the world, and what possible healing have I offered to this broken place?”
Still, at the heart of this tragic story is a glimmer of hope. Casey’s family goes on, holding each other that much closer having lost one of their own. As Olmsted says near the end of the book, “It’s not corny to be grateful for what you have, or to realize that if you lost it, how lonely you would be, how bleak the world.” Every interaction after Casey’s death is characterized with this kind of awareness. The author seems to be saying that if they don’t love each other more fiercely than ever, then Casey’s death will have been for nothing. And in that implicit assertion lies the book’s timeless truth: we must love every day since the next is never certain.
In The Tree We Come Home To, Jane Olmsted has provided us with a moving and profound meditation on what it means to be a family, on what it means to love, on what it means to be human. And how one deals with grief when the unthinkable happens. This memoir is a great gift to readers, allowing us to reflect deeply on both the beauty and fragility of life.
This review will appear in The Bowling Green Daily News.
On October 26, 2009, Casey Olmsted got into a heated argument with 18-year-old Patrick Burns over a young woman they both knew. Infuriated by their text messages, Casey drove out to Burns’ home to confront him. When Patrick saw Casey pulling up in front of his house, he grabbed a pistol and headed for the door. But his father, Edmund Leland Burns, snatched the gun from his son and proceeded to shoot in the direction of the car four times even though an unarmed Casey was already pulling away. Olmsted’s anguish over this scene is gut-wrenching: “I am sick with the thought of him driving away, knowing or not knowing what hit him, aware or not aware as the car rolled into the ditch. Alone, my poor boy, alone.”
The Tree We Come Home To is Olmsted’s attempt to examine this tragic incident from every angle, trying to make sense of a senseless crime. The author offers an unflinching look at formative moments in Casey’s history and includes those memories alongside letters, journal entries, memorials, songs, poems, and words from everyone in their extended family, including Casey himself. The result is something far greater than the sum of its parts. It’s a heartbreaking and poignant portrait of loss.
Reading Casey’s words on the page is a powerful experience, a raising of the dead, if you will, and the reader can’t help but be moved by Casey’s lifelong desire to pull himself out of a downward spiral fueled by addiction, insecurity, and violence: “I know I’ve messed up a lot. It is not too late but could never be soon enough.” Olmsted’s memoir functions as a character study of a young man who, like many people his age, struggled to find his way in the world.
Casey is depicted by his mother as a person who felt things—both love and anger—with great intensity as well as a person who never learned to harness those emotions. The reader simultaneously wants to hug Casey and to shake him. But his mother also shows him to be a person who naturally put others at ease, most especially his niece, Omni, and his daughter, Leah. A cousin described him as “someone you could be still with.”
At the same time, Olmsted offers an unflinching look at herself and everyone in the family: “It’s hard to acknowledge that he was as wounded as he was, or that I am so flawed.” Olmsted’s dismantling of her family’s dysfunction forces the reader to consider their own history, asking themselves the same questions the author asks herself: What could I have done differently? What could I do better? How can I learn from this going forward?
Much like Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, Olmsted’s memoir is a book about contemplation, a true study of the ontological nature of being. What is the meaning of life? Why are we here? What can we do with the little time we have? “I think a lot about being dead myself,” Olmsted writes. “Whether I will finish anything I’ve started and what it means if it ends up not mattering to anyone. What ‘good energy’ have I put into the world, and what possible healing have I offered to this broken place?”
Still, at the heart of this tragic story is a glimmer of hope. Casey’s family goes on, holding each other that much closer having lost one of their own. As Olmsted says near the end of the book, “It’s not corny to be grateful for what you have, or to realize that if you lost it, how lonely you would be, how bleak the world.” Every interaction after Casey’s death is characterized with this kind of awareness. The author seems to be saying that if they don’t love each other more fiercely than ever, then Casey’s death will have been for nothing. And in that implicit assertion lies the book’s timeless truth: we must love every day since the next is never certain.
In The Tree We Come Home To, Jane Olmsted has provided us with a moving and profound meditation on what it means to be a family, on what it means to love, on what it means to be human. And how one deals with grief when the unthinkable happens. This memoir is a great gift to readers, allowing us to reflect deeply on both the beauty and fragility of life.
This review will appear in The Bowling Green Daily News.
May 3, 2022
Jane Olmsted's brave account of her 'model' family's struggle to deal with the mental illness that devastated it is both a love story about the youngest of her three sons, Casey, and a kind of psychological detective story. The author unflinchingly sorts through her letters, Casey's journals, psychological reports, court records, and reminiscences by friends and family as she struggles to make sense of incomprehensible loss. She also looks to such seekers as Siddhartha, Jane Goodall, and Rainer Maria Rilke for answers that remain elusive. Olmsted's prose and occasional poetry illuminate the gray landscape of mental health care. She makes vividly clear that, as she writes, "We had many good times--I want to emphasize that, even as I make the claim that the five of use were desperate and some of us traumatized. Our boys loved us, tried to love each other, and we loved them. Love was everywhere." This book will resonate with anyone who has lost a loved one--or is trying to save one.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews