The Meaning of Our Tears

The True Story of the Lawson Family Murders of Christmas Day 1929

By: Trudy J. Smith

Narrated by: Peter Lerman, Rosie O'Toole

Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins

Publisher's summary

On a snowy Christmas Day in 1929, Charles Davis Lawson, a respected tobacco farmer in rural North Carolina, murdered everyone in his family except one son. He left the world to consider the reason behind his extremely surprising and brutal act. Since that time, a huge and lonely mass grave has existed quietly in a small family cemetery deep in the North Carolina woods, and it has left generations of people wondering why.

On the tombstone, the epitaph reads:

"Not now, but in the coming years,
It will be in a better land,
We'll read the meaning of our tears,
and then sometime we'll understand."

This sad tale became an even more mysterious one after the gruesome murder scene was left intact for Depression Era tourists to visit and walk through.

Sixty years later, more than could ever have been imagined surfaced from interviews with the elderly friends and family of the murderer. Many of whom finally had the courage to tell what they had known for many years. After so many long years, the Lawson family tragedy was documented in the original The Meaning of Our Tears.

©2006 Trudy Smith (P)2019 Trudy J Smith

Interesting study of a family and a time and place

I enjoyed the way the author offered considerable background and context to set the stage and humanize the people in the story. That said, the portrayal of the family life was a bit saccharine; I mean, clearly all wasn’t love and light with this family, but I guess that’s how some people prefer to remember the past. The narrator was pretty atrocious. He sounded like a baseball announcer from New York trying to affect a southern drawl and failing miserably. It wasn’t a terrible use of a credit.

Adjectives out of control

Very interesting story. But oh my it would be several chapters shorter without the superfluous descriptive adjectives. A very sad and compelling view into the way people lived only a short time ago. The readers style did fit well with this material and did his best with it, I’m sure. I was not sorry to have an end to it.

Wonderful, Fact-based Book.

A great fact-based book. Not your average thriller/horror story, but one of a true life murder.

Not great

Was interesting but was not easy to listen to but am sorry for the family