South of the Buttonwood Tree by Heather Webber

Amy  

magical realism, women's fiction

Blue and Sarah Grace are both in their mid-20s, both grew up in Buttonwood, AL, and both don’t have many friends.  Their families have a long-standing animosity towards each other.  They are both going through some personal difficulties when Blue finds a baby in the woods.  This causes both women to re-evaluate their lives and uncover some deep-seeded secrets.

Now that I’ve read three of Heather Webber’s novels, I can safely say that she follows a formula.  She centers the stories around one or two southern families with longstanding mutual hatred or long-held stubborn beliefs, the stories are centered around young women who need to overcome hurdles and transition to another phase in their lives, there is wonderful magical realism, there’s an unhappy marriage, and there’s a very kind man (or two) who turns out to be exactly who the protagonist(s) needed. There are domineering parents. There are caring people who step up to support the children in need. The young women need to depend on each other to find peace. Places/houses hold significance. There is often a minor character who is positioned to give the reader the pulse of the community around the issues at hand, giving some background about the major characters. Despite the formula, the individual novels each have their own charm. And I’m planning to keep reading Webber’s novels because I find them heartwarming. 

Of the two Webber novels I’d already read before this one, my favorite (Midnight at the Blackbird Café) is most similar to South of the Buttonwood Tree. But the premises of SotBT seemed a bit more manufactured/unlikely than MatBC. Plus, I was able to guess all but one of the major plot resolutions near the front of the novel. So I still prefer MatBC over this one.  But I did enjoy the characters within this novel.

The audiobook narrators were Hallie Ricardo and Stephanie Willis, the same people who narrated the last Webber audiobook I heard. They both are terrific voice actors with diverse repertoires.  I give them both an A.