The Gleaner

When informed of his wife Kate's impending death, folklorist Tyler Calhoun withdraws from what he sees as a bleak and loveless future. At the front door of his frame house in quiet Port Jefferson, Mississippi, appears a stream of casseroles and condolences from well-wishing neighbors, among them a biracial childhood friend of his dying wife, Olivia Kendall, running from a past filled with adultery, notoriety and murder. Stepping in to manage the Calhoun household, Olivia continues to look in upon the grief-stricken Tyler following his wife's death. Leaves change, seasons pass and before long, Tyler begins to develop feelings for Olivia, who has not only taken over his home, but appears to have designs on his heart. Before long, quiet Port Jefferson comes alive with whispers about a period of mourning too short and a budding romance that may go too far.

Steven Wells Hicks is not a Southerner by birth, but rather by choice. Originally from Omaha, he was educated at Phillips Exeter Academy and Coe College, and following a quarter-century career as a loose cannon in the advertising industry, started writing about the changing faces of the transitional South instead of hot dogs, cell phones, used cars and fertilizer.