Reviewed by James B. Wells
Beware the Tall Grass
by Ellen Birkett Morris
Columbus State University Press
Paperback, 244 pages, ISBN-13: 979-8988732105, March 2024
The belief in the dead communicating with the living is an ancient and mysterious one found in many cultures and religions. One intriguing phenomenon is the thousands of scientifically documented cases worldwide where young children recall memories from a past life they believe they have lived. These children typically begin speaking earlier than expected, using words never heard before and mentioning places they’ve never seen or been.
Ellen Birkett Morris’ debut novel, Beware the Tall Grass, explores this phenomenon by weaving two first-person protagonist narratives initially separated by over half a century. Slowly, the juxtaposed stories gently brush with each other but gradually lead to more abrasive and eventually heart-wrenching clashes with dramatic and life-threatening consequences.
Morris’s novel begins with Eve, a new mother who becomes increasingly concerned that her growing child, Charlie, is displaying more and more traces of a former life. It starts when Charlie’s infant’s eyes give the impression that he has an old soul who has already experienced many things in life. Later, he exhibits restlessness, night terrors, and begins verbalizing military terms like “attack” and “napalm,” eventually progressing to recalling firefights in helicopter landing zones in “Ia Drang,” Vietnam, the location of the first major engagement between U.S. Army soldiers and North Vietnamese troops that occurred in mid-November of 1965. Whereas Charlie’s behavior deeply disturbs Eve, her husband, Dan, initially dismisses his son’s behavior as him being smart and repeating things he has seen or heard. Eventually, and with her marriage to Dan threatened, Eve turns to pediatricians, neurologists, and child psychiatrists for explanations and possible cures.
Chapter by chapter, the book weaves with Eve’s and Charlie’s account a decades-old story of a heartbroken teen, Thomas, seeking to move on from a tragic loss and start afresh by joining the military in the mid-1960s. Thomas’ story begins with him as an eight-year-old boy leading an idyllic life with his horse Beau on a Montana ranch. Thomas’ childhood is wrecked when a snake in the tall grass spooks Beau, causing the horse to fall and break a leg, requiring Thomas to put his horse out of misery. Thomas is never the same, and despite finding teen love and companionship with his girlfriend, Carrie, he can never get his love and loss of Beau off his mind. Like many young men seeking a change, Thomas is s mesmerized by the pitch of a visiting U.S. Army recruiter and enlists in his senior year. Despite the change to military life, Thomas is still haunted by Beau. Even the sound of gunfire on the target range, and later, the terror expressed in the eyes of his dying and fallen brethren in Vietnam, remind him of his last minutes with Beau.
As their stories unfold and arc closer together by a common gravitational pull of undying love and limitless mercy, both protagonists are battle-tested as they confront new challenges and grapple with fear, further loss and death, keeping readers spellbound. Charlie’s and Thomas’ stories climax with both fearing what awaits them in the tall grass.
Whereas Morris’s intimate writing style makes the reader feel and think about the book’s fictional characters, her attention to scientific and historical detail provides an aura of authenticity to her storytelling. Sparing her prose by keeping sentences, paragraphs, and chapters short and alternating between protagonists makes the reading easy and her readers eager to know what comes next. Her supporting, well-crafted subplots create backstories that not only deepen her characters, exposing their motivations and making their later actions more plausible, but also further the plot and theme. Her lyrical arrangement of words often reads like poetry, keeping the reader entrenched and wondering throughout the book’s chapters whether the memories and experiences of the deceased can live on in the lives of others. “Could these echo long beyond a person’s life, like the light that we see from stars that are long dead (229)?”
Beware the Tall Grass reads like poetic, creative nonfiction, creating a beautiful and believable story that leaves the reader satisfied yet in wonder about what we know and don’t know about the mysteries of life and death. This novel is a compelling read.
About the reviewer: James B. Wells is the author of Because: A CIA Coverup and a Son’s Odyssey to Find the Father He Never Knew (to be released by Milspeak Books on Father’s Day, June 15, 2025).