Author: Carolyn Brown
After 13 years, Tina returns to her small hometown in Texas, intending to only visit the oak tree where she once hung out with her childhood friends, Walker and Gracie. As children, they called the oak tree the Tomorrow Tree because they were sitting beneath its branches talking about their hopes for the future. As it turns out, her return also brings her back to Mae and Cleo, who helped raise three friends, and Gracie and Walker now live with their former carers. Tina ends up joining them and rekindling friendships from the past. She starts working in Walker’s feedstore, and their renewed friendship starts developing into something deeper while Gracie, this time, drifts away, developing a relationship with an out-of-town man.
The novel explores the concept of the chosen family as something created through care, loyalty, presence, and emotional commitment rather than biology because Mae and Cleo provide maternal affection that Tina, Walker, and Gracie need, and this maternal affection was provided appropriately and in a way that supports three friends rather than trying to mold them into something they are expected to be, which is why three friends end up boarding with Mae and Cleo.
Another theme of the book is homecoming and belonging because the novel explores what home is: a place where we came from or the place where we get recognized and cared for? There is that old saying that home is where you are happy (or something along those lines), and this novel tackles that. Equally, the novel connects the concept of home with childhood and childhood wounds because when Tina left her hometown, she did not escape what happened there and what drove her away (narcissistic parents, judgmental community), and thus, we explore geographical distance and emotional recovery as different processes.
The novel, I suppose, argues that belonging is socially created. We could indeed ask a question about what makes a group of people a family: shared blood, shared history, or the repeated decision to care for one another? The book suggests that home and family are not automatic conditions because they are produced through everyday acts such as offering someone a room, giving them work, remembering their history, accepting them for who they are, and allowing them to return without demanding they change in some way.
However, the story moves painfully slowly, and there is not enough detail about Tina’s life when she was outside of Benson, her hometown. There is too much sweetness in the writing in the dialogues with Mae and Cleo for my liking, so this novel leans towards romance, which is not my thing. This book was one of Amazon First Reads, which I received probably because I like to read stories about everyday life and small towns, albeit not romance. Romance lovers will likely love this book, though.
Thank you for reading!