The Understanding Tree

The summer June Calloway turns nine, the family coffee can disappears from Miss Athena’s pantry—sixty-some dollars in nickels, dimes, and folded bills gone without a trace. In the heat of a Baton Rouge August, suspicion lands fast on Pooh, June’s fourteen-year-old cousin sleeping on the pull-out couch because there is nowhere cooler, or kinder, for him to go. But June has secrets of her own, and she is old enough to notice that grown-ups’ anger often points somewhere deeper than the thing they claim to be mad about. Around Miss Athena’s kitchen table, blame, loyalty, pride, and love gather like weather. With a child’s sharp eye and a family’s long memory, The Understanding Tree explores what is said, what is withheld, and how one small loss can reveal the hidden roots beneath a household.