The Tree of Life

Audiobook coming soon...

Description:

What if there weren’t two trees in the Garden?

Kayden Butler grew up asking questions like that out loud, which, in his family’s church, is the most dangerous thing a boy can do. He and his twin brother Jayden are the sons of ministers inside of an Atlanta church dynasty where obedience is better than sacrifice, every mistake echoes, and the things everyone knows are the things nobody says.

Then one summer night, five white envelopes appear on an offering plate. Five names. Five secrets. Before the service ends, the church’s golden son is on the floor, and a whole institution begins rearranging itself around a wound it refuses to look at.

Ten years later, Kayden comes home. His grandmother is turning eighty. His twin is getting married in the same sanctuary where everything broke. The weekend is built to put the church’s name back in the city’s mouth, and Kayden arrives with a partner his family won’t name, a decade of distance, and eyes that never learned to look away.

Stories like this usually end one of two ways: the church burns down, or everybody hugs at the altar. The Tree of Life offers a third way, where nothing collapses, nobody converts on cue, and only what can no longer be unseen gets acknowledged.

“I didn’t have a better altar to walk toward. I just knew this one wasn’t it.”

A novel for everyone who left the building but never left the question.