Review of "Drums of a Different Tribe: A Son’s Message from the Great Beyond" by D.H. Hutton

Score: 94+/100 (9.4+ out of 10)

Drums of a Different Tribe is a heart-wrenching, inspirational, and transcendent spiritual memoir by D.H. Hutton, bringing decades of experience, pain, and epiphanies to page.

While this memoir covers a range of rich experiences, Drums of a Different Tribe largely centers on Chris, the author’s miraculous, gifted teenage son whose sudden death shattered the family and sent his father searching for proof that love and consciousness continue. Hutton sifts through memories, uncanny coincidences, and spiritual experiences to understand whether the cross in the shower, the tornado vision, the face in the windshield, and other moments are truly messages from Chris or just comforting stories the mind tells itself. What makes this so powerful is that Hutton never pretends grief is simple or neat; he lets us feel the raw scream in the emergency room, the numbness of the funeral day, and the slow, hard work of living again. The reader is left with the sense that Chris is still present in ways that matter, and that Hutton has wrestled his way into a hard-earned, hopeful faith rather than an easy platitude. It is a moving, contemplative, and ultimately consoling read for anyone who has lost someone or ever wondered if the bonds of love really survive death.

There is no greater pain for a parent than the loss of a child. We regularly support the Lauren McCluskey Foundation and Petit Family Foundation, which both honor the tragic loss of young people whose lives were prematurely ended by unfair circumstances. Something about that always touches our hearts and spirits: the way these young people—who are no longer physically with us—are still with us in a different way. Every year, they bring people together from all around the country in remembrance and honor of them. They advance causes that improve conditions for the current and future generations. They continue to make the world a better place long after taking their final breaths.

In a similar and parallel way, Chris continues to live and positively influence the author's life and the world as a whole.

Speaking of the author's life... this book also deals with near-death experiences and narrowly avoided tragedies (one in particular involving a certain 185-foot waterfall in Hawaii), and the emotional landscape of growing up during the Baby Boomer era.

Along the way, it explores the Vietnam draft and the moral tension it created for young men, the intensity of friendship, risk-taking, and the impulsiveness of youth, and the slow shift from skepticism to spiritual openness. Nature, music, and memory all play powerful roles in shaping belief, making this an immersive, lyrical, and contemplative story about how trauma across a lifetime can be a part of one's journey toward realizations and actualization.

Something about this book that really stood out to us was the idea of standing up for what you believe in and what you think is right even when the powers-that-be do everything they can to stop you. Specifically, it seems as though Hutton was a passionate anti-war activist, actively opposing the continuation of the Vietnam War. The author makes the argument that the Vietnam War greatly contrasted with World War II. World War II was a just war against a clearly evil enemy who attacked first. In contrast, Vietnam was a war that seemed to be needlessly fought, heavily victimizing innocent civilians and soldiers who didn't really want to be there, and based on a shaky premise.

The author points out the corruption and abuse of power by the government in attempting to suppress the anti-war movement, all while committing crimes itself (even those leading to Nixon having to step down). One of the central events of this book is the Kent State massacre in May 1970, an event which saw the Ohio National Guard use 67 bullets and bayonets to violently end a protest by unarmed students, resulting in four deaths and nine more wounded. The irony isn't lost on us that the federal government has been really trigger-happy lately in sending the National Guard and its various agencies into major cities, allegedly to stop crime and end protests that it claims are violent and/or illegal. It seems like history repeates itself.

That ironically fits the cyclical pattern Hutton keeps hinting at throughout the book: history repeats itself when leaders refuse to listen, when ordinary people are treated as problems instead of partners, and when power is used to silence rather than to protect. Also, the dead speak. Truth always wins in the end. And everything comes around eventually.

It often seems like this book verges on existentialism and the metaphysical. There's one particular existential moment that stands out to us, and that's when the author describes a shower he took after learning he would have a son. He compares it to being “baptized,” letting the hot water pour over him as he thinks about the responsibility, mystery, and miracle of bringing a new life into the world. In that scene, it feels like he is being washed into a new identity as a father, stepping out of the shower as someone forever changed. It is powerful in hindsight, because we know what will eventually happen to Chris, and it turns an everyday moment into something sacred and symbolic. This is the kind of quiet, reflective scene the book does very well, turning ordinary experiences into doorways for big questions about purpose, identity, and what it means to really live.

The author also does a fascinating job at using parallels. For example, Chris is described as having been a "blue baby" due to having the umbilical cord around his neck when born. This is compared to Hutton, who had nearly drowned during the Makahiku Falls incident in Hawaii. In a moment that we found truly special, Hutton talks about how this shared experience—the result of a lack of air—binds him and helps him to relate to his newborn son.

There are other remarkable events that happen in this book. Just wait until you read the part about the many tornadoes the author witnessed in Austin! Oh, and the gray wolf that appeared out of nowhere!

There are also some great life lessons in here. For example, the book uses the continuous motif of a castle and how a castle isn't built in one night. Instead, a castle is built brick by brick.

("When castles are built, they are built one brick at a time.")

Another motif, of course, are the drums that are referred to in the title. At first, the “drums of a distant tribe” are the sounds of nature and protest, the restless rhythms of a generation marching against the Vietnam War. As the book progresses, those drums become something more spiritual, representing the quiet, insistent call of the Next World and the “tribe” of souls who have already crossed over. By the end, Hutton suggests that our own spiritual drums slowly fall into step with that distant rhythm, especially through the ongoing bond between father and son. What's interesting is that the author notices the "drums" that played in the many places he has lived including in Texas and Hawaii, or in the 1970s or the modern day. It says a lot about how the same beats play out regardless of where you live or in what time of history you live in.

The book also talks about how we should be open and sensitive enough to read the signs. God is always trying to let us know something, and we should be receptive of it. The author notes how it was becoming apparent that Chris has an irregular heartbeat and that he should take it seriously. We found this very interesting. What is God and/or the universe trying to tell you? Are you listening?

Check it out on Amazon!