Sweet Baby

Set partially in Calico Rock (Izard County), Sweet Baby is a 1998 romantic suspense novel written by bestselling author Sharon Sala, a native of Oklahoma, and published by MIRA Books, an imprint of Harlequin Enterprises that specializes in more mainstream women’s fiction. It was republished as an ebook by Rosetta Books of New York in 2015.  

The story opens with a prologue set in rural Arkansas, near Calico Rock, in September 1973. Six-year-old Victoria (Tory) Lancaster is taking the bus home from school, having spent the previous night at a slumber party. When she returns home, she finds not only her mother gone, but also all the furnishings and furniture of the house—even her doll, Sweet Baby. It is later revealed that Tory stayed in the house for days, waiting for her mother and Ollie, her mother’s partner, to return; while waiting, one of Ollie’s associates came to the house, found Tory, and raped her. She was found at the house three days later and placed into foster care, remaining mute for four months. 

In the present, Tory works as a freelance photojournalist and lives with boyfriend Brett Hooker, who works as an investigator for the district attorney’s office in Oklahoma City. Brett regards Tory sometimes as “more gypsy than lover” given her regular and lengthy absences from his life. She returns from her latest assignment, photographing carnivals, and as she is developing the pictures, the image of one particular man, with a tattooed face, stands out in her mind, and she begins to have nightmares about her childhood.  

Meanwhile, Brett is trying to track down a man named Harold Tribbey, witness to a gangland killing. Harold is being pursued by hitman Gus Huffman, in the employ of Romeo Leeds, the mob boss Harold’s testimony might implicate in the killing. Brett finds Harold at a concert, but Gus shoots Brett. Brett undergoes surgery for his shoulder wound, but Gus tries to kill him at the hospital. Tory manages to stop him, and Gus immediately offers to provide evidence on Romeo Leeds.  

After Brett has recovered and returned to their apartment, Tory departs without warning to Dellpoint, Iowa, where she had taken the picture of the tattooed man. Asking around, she finds his name is Oliver “Stinger” Hale and that he lived in a town called Morrow. A former landlady tells Tory that Oliver had lived there for quite some time, having come from Arkansas to work at the mills, and lets her search his belongings. When she finds her rag doll, Sweet Baby, in the basement, she races back to Oklahoma City. 

In the meantime, Brett has decided to rent a house, and so Tory arrives to an empty apartment, just like when she was a child, and she has a complete mental breakdown. A neighbor calls Brett, but Tory has to be hospitalized briefly. Afterward, she begins to confide in him the content of her dreams, and Brett calls in favors to get access to her childhood records. 

Since Brett is on medical leave, he decides to help Tory reconstruct the mystery of her past. He finds Oliver (Ollie) Hale, sick and dying, at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester after having attempted to rob a liquor store. In a delirious state when they visit, Hale begs forgiveness for having accidentally killed a woman named Ruthie (Tory’s mother) and hidden her body.  

His deathbed confession hits the news, and Brett and Tory head to Calico Rock. They meet the chief of police, Denton Washburn, who was a young cop twenty-five years prior and had been the one to take Tory from her abandoned home. He tells her that her father, Danny, died about a month before she was born. Hale moved in with Tory’s mother about five months later. A federal agent named Darrell Rentshaw takes the couple out to the old Lancaster place. In Calico Rock, she reconnects with old friends and starts to remember more, including Ollie’s friend raping her. Tory is eventually able to guide the agents to an old well, where they find the skeleton of her mother.  

An epilogue takes place three years later, with Tory and Brett married and parents to a three-year-old girl, Bonnie Ruth Hooker; all three visit the cemetery to place flowers on the graves of Tory’s parents, now interred together.  

For additional information:
Sala, Sharon. Sweet Baby. Don Mills, Ontario: MIRA Books, 1998. 

Staff of the CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas