The Sweet Gum Tree

The Sweet Gum Tree is a 2005 romance novel written by Katherine Allred and published by Cerridwen Press, a division of Ellora’s Cave Publishing of Akron, Ohio. The novel is set in the fictional Arkansas community of Morganville on Crowley’s Ridge and takes its title from the American sweetgum tree (Liquidambar styraciflua), which, narrator Alix French notes at the beginning of her story, “is the chameleon of wood, its corky exterior hiding its inner ability to imitate anything from cherry to mahogany. But its real value, one unrealized by most people, is its deep red heart, steady and strong.”

Alix French is an eight-year-old girl from a fairly respectable family, her grandfather being a retired judge, who one summer day befriends the ten-year-old Nick Anderson, son of Frank Anderson, the drunken and abusive owner of a salvage yard on town’s edge. When his father discovers books Alix has loaned Nick, he beats his son severely, and Nick stays in a room in the barn at Alix’s family’s place, recovering, with permission to stay there whenever he wants. The two kids become close as the years go on, with Nick eventually confessing an attraction to Alix when she is fourteen.

Alix’s later teenage years are somewhat tumultuous. When she is seventeen, her long-absent father, Jim, re-enters her life. The next year, she finds Nick in an apparent embrace with another girl, Lindsey, and so she begins dating a classmate, Hugh Morgan, whose father owns the local mill, partly as revenge. However, Nick shows up on Christmas Day, insisting that Alix misunderstood what she saw earlier, and they end up having sex in her room. Afterward, Nick hints at unexplained trouble in Lindsey’s life, saying it would be best if people believed that Nick and Lindsey were dating, and that Alix and Hugh were also serious about each other, although Nick and Alix continue to see each other secretly.

Near the end of her senior year, Alix gives Nick an ultimatum, and he agrees to come clean about their relationship soon. However, that night, Nick is arrested for the shooting death of his father, Frank Anderson. Knowing the history of parental abuse in the Anderson household, the sheriff gives Nick the option to join the army and leave town for good or face manslaughter charges; he chooses the former. After he leaves, Alix discovers that she is pregnant. Hugh offers to marry her, and with few options, Alix accepts. Shortly after they are married, Alix learns that Lindsey has left town, apparently to join Nick in exile.

In January, Alix gives birth to a daughter named Katie, but the child dies at six months of age of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). The death sends Alix into a spiral of depression, but Hugh’s father, Ian, recruits her into the family business, and soon Alix is running her own building supply company, Southern Supply. After years of an unhappy marriage marked by Hugh’s adultery, Alix leaves him and moves back to the family farm. Then, fifteen years after having left Morganville, Nick returns with a fourteen-year-old son, Daniel, having worked in the oil industry in Saudi Arabia after leaving the army and saving his money. He buys twenty acres of land next to the French family farm and begins building a house he says is for both him and Alix. She, however, is determined to have nothing to do with Nick, but this is difficult in small-town Morganville, and after much conflict, they finally come to some kind of peace. When Alix discovers that her best friend Jenna was Hugh’s longtime lover, she demands sex from Nick as comfort.

The next day, her cousin Cody, who is now sheriff, shows up after work with Lindsey, saying, “It’s time you found out what really happened fifteen years ago.” Frank Anderson had been paying Lindsey’s mother for sex but soon developed an interest in Lindsey herself. On the night Alix gave her ultimatum to Nick, Frank raped Lindsey, and she shot him; Nick, however, took responsibility for the deed, and when he left for the army, he claimed Lindsey as a dependent stepsister so that she could travel with him. Daniel was Frank’s son, and thus Nick’s half brother, whom he eventually adopted. The truth, however, enrages Alix, feeling now that Nick chose to leave her years ago, rather than being driven away. When he later shows up at her place, she confronts him with her own pregnancy and the death of their daughter.

Alix retreats to her Uncle Vern’s cabin in Hardy (Sharp County) for a week. Jenna finds her and talks her into returning to Morganville, and she rents a house near her business. Hugh visits, and they reconcile, leaving as friends. Then Daniel shows up at her place, worried about Nick, who has every night been visiting the cemetery where Katie is buried, beneath a large sweetgum tree. She goes to the cemetery to meet him, and they spend the night looking over pictures of Katie. In the epilogue, after a year and a half of working on their relationship, Nick and Alix are married, and a year later, she is pregnant again.

Novelist Katherine Allred was born in Arkansas and received a BS in journalism from Arkansas State University in Jonesboro (Craighead County). A member of the Romance Writers of America, she wrote a number of books for Cerridwen Press and HarperVoyager. Although The Sweet Gum Tree was not reviewed by major publications, it attracted a dedicated fan base online.

For additional information:
Allred, Katherine. The Sweet Gum Tree. Akron, OH: Cerridwen Press, 2005.

“Book Review: The Sweet Gum Tree.” Natasha Is a Book Junkie. https://natashaisabookjunkie.com/2012/07/19/the-sweet-gum-tree-by-katherine-allred/ (accessed February 20, 2026).

“Review: The Sweet Gum Tree by Katherine Allred.” Vilma Iris. https://vilmairis.com/sweetgumtree/ (accessed February 20, 2026).