Beneath the Broken Oak
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Trees don’t heal. They seal.
But Forester Jodee Trevaine isn’t a tree. The wounds of abandonment she’s spent years denying will be ripped open the night she witnesses a child’s abduction.
The hardscrabble West Texas town of El Hueso, where keeping secrets is what keeps you alive, is the last place one would expect to find healing.
Until her job brings her there for a dying tree.
With new friends and the unexpected reacquaintance with the man she loved and left, Jodee has everything to gain—and just as much to lose—as she races against time to rescue the boy.
Could it be that her roots go deeper than she realized into the soil of El Hueso?
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When forester Jodee Trevaine travels to El Hueso in hopes of saving an old tree, she doesn’t expect to run into her old flame Blue Sunday. She also didn’t plan on stepping into a mess of trouble, but that’s what happens when she witnesses a young boy’s abduction. After the attack, she finds herself struggling to remember what happened, and she also finds herself struggling to keep Blue at a distance. Meanwhile, Blue has his own agenda, one that he’s trying to keep hidden from Jodee even as he hopes to draw closer to her.
The titular oak is more than just a tree. It carries secrets borne of a brutal act, an act that irrevocably connected the Charidy, DeGroot, and Sunday families. And like the rest of El Hueso, the tree gives up its secrets reluctantly.
Lori Altebaumer gives us an engaging dual timeline mystery, with clues that unfold and intertwine in chapters that alternate between past and present. There were moments that had me holding my breath, and moments that had me wanting to just shake either Jodee or Blue for putting themselves in a really tight spot. I understood why they did it – they both had powerful motivation to do the right thing. But there were some nail-biters!
The story also offers a pretty slow-burn romance, as Jodee is hesitant to believe Blue has changed. They both have some things to unpack if they want any future relationship to be successful, with Jodee in particular having to come to terms with her fears of abandonment. I love it when a relationship isn’t an insta-romance. Jodee and Blue’s reconnection developed at a pace where we could see their concerns and see how those were handled.
Faith underpins the story, but it’s not necessarily a picture-perfect faith of someone who Has It All Together. Jodee in particular wrestles with faith, wrestles with the idea that God cares about her or hears her. I really enjoyed the mysterious cowboy who appeared to serve as her guardian angel, her compass pointing her toward the right choice, and the fact that a certain scent seemed to alert her to his presence.
If you enjoy a twisty, compelling mystery that weaves through past and present, you’ll love Beneath the Broken Oak.
Originally posted at theplainspokenpen.com.