The Sweet Gum Tree

A well-respected southern family's precocious darling, eight-year-old Alix French, grew up eating sweet tea, corn bread, and soup beans every day. However, the day she met Nick Anderson, a ten-year-old kid from the wrong side of town, was anything but typical. With nothing more than a tin of bee balm and unwavering resolve, Alix cures the obvious signs of a recent beating on his back—an act that permanently alters both of their lives.

They stick together through adolescent problems and childhood misfortunes as friendship develops into love. The future seemed bright until the fatal night when Nick's violent father, Frank Anderson, is shot and killed in his filthy trailer.

Nick vanishes out of nowhere, leaving Alix pregnant and alone. She battles the hurt of Nick's desertion, a horrible marriage, her family, and friends for the next fifteen years. She is, however, at last beginning to put her life back together. She's glad, if not overjoyed, that her divorce is nearly complete, her company is doing well, and then one day she glances up to discover Nick standing across the bar. He is back.and he's not alone himself.

Nick attempts to earn Alix's affection, but she fights him tooth and nail, causing her to be thrown into turmoil and anguish once again. The truth about Frank Anderson's death is the one thing that might shatter the emotional fortress she's constructed around herself. However, neither Nick nor Alix are ready for the emotional explosion that has the power to both heal and destroy when that truth is revealed and those barriers fall down.