Scarlet Oak

Book excerpt: When darkness branches to the soul of a family, light arrives in the form of a strange girl from the backwoods. Tree sprite Scarlet Oak exists as an outlier in her forested society. Wingless since she was very young, she imagines deeper things, longing to know more than a warm bond with her birth oak. Then, one Thanksgiving night, humanness wanders into her realm when an autistic boy hangs himself from her oak tree. Heartbroken, Scarlet trails the boy's father and the rescue workers out of the woods. As the father stands alone and grief-stricken on a dirt road near his beat-up blue truck, Scarlet approaches, offering him a crimson leaf. By doing so, she trades her oak roots for human ones and her forest for farmland in a quest to unearth the tragic secret that led to the boy's death. But soon Scarlet falls for a complex youth named Warren. And if she gives in to this new kind of love, it will strip away her magic, and she can never truly return to her oak or nature's wild. Scarlet Oak is a soulful exploration of our fragile ties with nature, community, and loved ones. It poignantly grapples with how we move through loss to find meaning and connection.