Book excerpt: "In a small Alabama town in Zion County, life is finally looking up for twenty-year-old Donnette Sullivan. Having just inherited her aunt's old house and beauty shop, she's taken over the business, and her husband Tim, recently crippled in an accident, is beginning to cope not just with his disabilities but also with the loss of his dreams. Once a promising artist who gave up art for sports, Tim paints a sign for Donnette's shop, Making Waves. The raising of the sign causes ripples through the town. The lives of Donnette and tim are about to be changed. The catalyst for change is the return of Taylor Dupree. The exotic Taylor-half Cajun and a grandson of the wealthy Clark family-was raised in Zion by a doting aunt after he was deserted by his mother. Taylor left two years ago for Tulane and as been unable to return, due to his part in the accident that injured Tim, his closest friend. Though the rebellious black-sheep Taylor was unharmed, Tim, the popular and highly recruited star quarterback of the Clarksville Blue Devils, lost his chance for a sure football scholarship and a better life. It's Taylor's love for his elderly surrogate mother Aunt Della that brings him back, a love soon to be put to the ultimate test. When a shocking secret hidden for two years, the secret behind Tim and Taylor's accident, is uncovered by Donnette, Taylor is forced to sacrifice either his allegiance to Aunt Della or his friendship with Tim. In a sequence of events-sometimes funny, sometimes tragic-leading up the surprise denouement, the lives of others are unavoidably affected. This story is also about the patriarch of the Clarks, Harris (who rules his family as he does Clarksville), and his sisters Della and Francis Martha, one in a fight against going to a nursing home and the other a slow-witted spinster. It's also about Sonny Clark, classic good-ole-boy out to get his cousin Taylor; and his new bride Ellis, a foot-washing primitive Baptist who sets her cap for a Clark heir and captures the worthless Sonny."BOOK JACK.