A New York Times Bestseller
An NPR Best Book
In North Carolina's tight-knit Oak Knoll neighborhood, professor Valerie Alston-Holt is raising her bright and talented biracial son, Xavier, who is headed to college in the fall. All is well until the Whitmans, an apparently traditional family, move in next door. Popular local businessman Brad has new money, ambition, a wife who escaped her upbringing in a trailer park, and a secretly troubled teenaged daughter. With little in common except a property line, these two very different families quickly find themselves at odds: first, over an historic oak tree in Valerie's yard, and soon after, the blossoming romance between their two teenagers.