Sweet Olive

Laden with Southern charm and Louisiana flavor, the first of Christie’s new Trumpet and Vine series introduces a town full of riches seen and unseen. Camille Gardner reluctantly arrives in Samford to close a drilling contract for her uncle’s oil and gas company. She wants to honor and conclude her family business obligation and return to her first love, curating art. But local folk artists and Marsh Cameron, their intriguing and too-likable lawyer, have banded together to save their community from intrusive drilling. Camille finds herself torn between fulfilling her debt to her uncle and respecting the town’s down-home values of family, faith, and art. As she navigates tricky politicking and traitorous emotions, she reconciles painful memories and rediscovers her own spiritual identity. The story’s fluid, Mitford-style pace perfectly matches the easygoing ambience of smalltown Louisiana. Fans of the author’s Green series will feel they’ve met new friends just down the road who share the same humidity, fragrance, and foliage that Christie so effortlessly recreates. Agent: Janet Kobobel Grant, Books & Such Literary Agency. (Sept. 24)