Monarchs Under the Sassafras Tree, Paperback

It's an unusually warm autumn, 1929, and O.T. Lawrence is about as content as a cotton farmer can be in Five Forks, Georgia. Nothing--not poverty, drought, or even the boll weevi--can spoil the idyllic life he shares with his doting wife and children and his beloved twin brother Walt. Until illness and Black Tuesday take everything O.T. ever held dear in one fell swoop. Grieving, drinking, and careening toward homelessness, O.T. is on the brink of ending it all when he receives an odd letter from a teenage acquaintance, the enigmatic Sivvy Hargrove, who is locked away in Milledgeville's asylum for the insane. Traveling through desperate antebellum towns, O.T. and his daughter Ginny are determined to find Sivvy and discover her story. Set against the backdrop of the Great Depression, Monarchs Under the Sassafras Tree is a love story to Georgia and the spirit of its people--a story of family, unconditional love, poverty, injustice, and finding the strength inside to keep on going when all is lost.

Lillah Lawson lives in North Georgia, not far from Five Forks, with her husband and son, a silly dog, and two slightly evil cats. When she's not writing, you can find her baking, playing bass, marathoning 1980s sitcoms, or riding her bike. She is currently working on another historical fiction novel, set in the late 1960s.