The Doughnut Tree

“The writer has a masterful way of pulling together events inspired by actual historical incidents to weave an engrossing story of the rise of a young girl from a dismal childhood and drastic circumstances of early adulthood to become a highly successful and prominent lady of the South by finding her true soul mate. This story will surprise many readers by revealing aspects of life in the South of the early 1900’s in a way that differs significantly from more commonly related tales.” -John Rankin, Alabama historian and author

Percy Taylor has been many things over the years…honest man, judge, farmer, and bootlegger. He's lost a wife and mother under mysterious circumstances, fought in the Spanish American War and raised a beautiful daughter. Now it's 1920, and he's getting married again, this time to a known madam where there will be blacks, a dog as ‘best friend,’ a homosexual male bridesmaid, and alcohol…all during prohibition!

Percy's lived most of his life in the small northern Alabama town of Taylorsville near Huntsville, taking people as he finds them. A friend to all, he looked past the color of a person's skin making him at odds with the KKK. During the reception he takes time to look back on his life, including fond memories of Miss Lily's crispy fried doughnuts, eaten under the branches of the old oak where a corpse once swung to save an innocent life.

Fictionalized from many actual events and characters drawn from the history and records of Huntsville, Alabama and the area of the Tennessee River where a town, Taylorsville, once existed, The Doughnut Tree recreates a most colorful era in the cotton mill town's history, when lawlessness and corruption were the norm, not the exception.

Catherine L. Knowles considers herself an unlikely author. As a child she often skipped school, preferring adventure to the classroom. She discovered early on that you cannot pirate a Tennessee River dock and use it to float to the beach.

The inspiration for Knowles's ideas come from watching the waters of the Tennessee flow past her home in Huntsville, Alabama, where she and her architect husband live with Sugar, their spoiled-rotten rescued dog.

Caught up in her husband's quest to rebuild the small abandoned town of Taylorsville a half-mile from their home, Knowles found herself deep in the library archives researching the region's history from 1900 to 1926. A woman who once skipped history class became hooked on the past, and her imagination of what it was like to live in this remarkable period of Alabama's history...a passion that led to The Doughnut Tree.