One summer. One farm. One girl finding the courage to grow.
Fans of Where the Crawdads Sing, The Secret Life of Bees, and Where the Watermelons Grow will be drawn to this layered Southern debut filled with heart and hope.
In the summer of 1964, fourteen-year-old Maralee Truett faces the hardest season of her life on her family’s Eastern North Carolina tobacco farm. Her father, haunted by WWII, grows more volatile by the day. Her mother retreats into silence, and her brother rebels against expectation. Caught in the middle, Maralee quietly tends the animals, her gifts overlooked and her voice unheard.
An unlikely friendship with Josie Billings, a bold Black girl, challenges how Maralee sees the world. When sparks fly with the new boy in town, she begins to imagine something more for herself.
But a desperate moment with her father sets off a chain of events that changes everything. In the aftermath, Maralee must wrestle with guilt, loyalty, and whether she can become more than the girl who keeps the peace.
Heart of the Green Leaf is a moving coming-of-age story about resilience, family, and finding strength even when the roots are tangled.
One summer. One farm. One girl finding the courage to grow.
Fans of Where the Crawdads Sing, The Secret Life of Bees, and Where the Watermelons Grow will be drawn to this layered Southern debut filled with heart and hope.
In the summer of 1964, fourteen-year-old Maralee Truett faces the hardest season of her life on her family’s Eastern North Carolina tobacco farm. Her father, haunted by WWII, grows more volatile by the day. Her mother retreats into silence, and her brother rebels against expectation. Caught in the middle, Maralee quietly tends the animals, her gifts overlooked and her voice unheard.
An unlikely friendship with Josie Billings, a bold Black girl, challenges how Maralee sees the world. When sparks fly with the new boy in town, she begins to imagine something more for herself.
But a desperate moment with her father sets off a chain of events that changes everything. In the aftermath, Maralee must wrestle with guilt, loyalty, and whether she can become more than the girl who keeps the peace.
Heart of the Green Leaf is a moving coming-of-age story about resilience, family, and finding strength even when the roots are tangled.
Summer 1964, Eastern North Carolina
The pig was sprawled on her side, her swollen belly rising up high above the rest of her. She grunted, her chest laboring, rising and falling with shallow breaths.
I hung on the gate, balancing just so, my hands gripping the chalky metal bar. A bead of sweat rolled down the side of my face. I wiped it with the back of my hand, pushing the sweat into the loose hairs that fell out of my neglected ponytail.
“Is she finally having the piglets, Pa?”
The air was thick and musty; the heat from the afternoon had held on, creeping into the evening. Even though I had spent most of last night here in the pig house, waiting for the piglets to be born, the smell still overwhelmed me: a potent mix of ammonia and rotting potato skins. I breathed through my mouth, trying not to gag.
“Is she?”
“Yeah, she seems to be trying to, but something isn’t right,” Pa said and pulled out his blue handkerchief to wipe his face— something he did when he needed to think.
The pig tried to wallow, move somehow, but stopped out of pure exhaustion. Pa, leaning over her, gently rubbed and rested his hand on her engorged belly.
“She okay?” Sturgin, my older brother, stood at Pa’s right side, a place he often found himself, a place where I sometimes dreamed of standing, even though I knew better. His tall, lean frame mirrored Pa’s so closely now, it was getting harder to tell them apart.
Pa didn’t answer. He continued to study the sow, squinting his light blue eyes, his brow furrowed, which highlighted all his sun-beaten wrinkles, especially the deep scar over his left eye. It was his only souvenir from the war.
I could usually tell if an animal needed something. Just a feeling I got, like an extra energy that I could see and read. Sometimes I could even feel that energy like it was my own. Like the time I watched a baby mockingbird fall out of its nest, feathers all a mess, stirring in the dirt. I felt a dull ache in my own arms, and I knew he just needed to stretch his wings.
My mouth was dry, but I still turned my head to spit, trying to clear my increasing nausea. “What’s happening? Is Penny okay?”
Pa nodded, “Yes, Maralee. She’s okay, for now. But these piglets aren’t. Seem to be stuck somehow.” He stood up from his squat and took a deep breath. “Damn it!” He shook his head. “I think I need to call Abe.” He shoved his handkerchief deep into the pockets of his faded jeans and headed to the house.
Pa didn’t curse much, so when he did, I knew it was bad. I stepped into the pen looking at the face of the sow. Penny had fear in her eyes.
“Not sure you should come in here, Mare,” Sturgin crossed his arms in an authoritarian way that made me want to punch him.
“I spent all last night here with her,” I pointed to the book, Alice in Wonderland, that straddled over of the pen railing. “You think that’s Penny’s book?”
“Things might get scary, that’s all. Not sure you can handle it,” he smirked. “But that does explain your smell today,” Sturgin chuckled at his own joke.
I clenched my jaw, trying my best to ignore his jab. I grabbed an old cup and scooped it into the cloudy water of the trough. Carefully, I walked over to the pig, leaning over to rub her neck. I slowly dripped water into her mouth, which Penny eagerly lapped. As I tipped the cup, giving her the last drops, an eerie feeling came over me, looking up to see Sturgin staring at me, a strange look on his face.
“What?” I asked.
“How’d you do that? I tried to give her water and she just grunted, snapped, and put up a huge fuss,” Sturgin said.
I shook my head. “Stu, you can’t just muscle through life, just doing things. Sometimes, you gotta show you care to get things done in the best way.” I rubbed the sow’s neck again, as Penny’s nose gently nuzzled at one of my mud-caked Keds.
A truck barreled down the drive and Sturgin left the pen to go meet it. Pa called out to Dr. Abe Baxter, the local veterinarian, as the truck door slammed shut. I waited behind, looking down at Penny. “It’s going to be okay.”
It was unclear if I was talking to the pig, or to myself. The situation would change when Dr. Baxter got to the pen. Would Pa let me stay? I snuck over to the gate, trying to listen to their conversation in the yard, but could hear only bits of it. So I crept out of the pen, staying close to the wall, hoping to hear more and not get noticed. But I was noticed anyway. Pa glanced over and nodded my way.
“Go to the house and get me an old shirt, will ya, Maralee?”
“Ah…yes, sir.” My cheeks filled with a warm flush. I turned and ran to the house. “Ma! I gotta get a shirt for Pa!”
I jumped off the back porch, one of Pa’s old shirts in hand, rushing across the yard to get back to the action. Sturgin had left the pig house and was heading toward me. My cheeks burned again, anticipating more pushback from him.
“I’m coming and you can’t stop me!” I said.
“Stop you? I was coming to get you to help.”
I staggered to a stop in front of him. Sturgin was my older brother and he always made sure I remembered that. He and Pa worked together on the farm in sync, like “two peas in a pod.” I was a hard worker too and worked alongside them but never fell into their effortless rhythm.
“Does Pa want me there?” I asked.
“I said I was going to get you. He didn’t tell me not to,” Sturgin said.
I nodded, my eyes began to sting and my throat got tight. I wished for a time that Pa would search me out to be of help. But it seemed tonight wasn’t that night. While I tried to put up a tough front, I still always felt second to Sturgin in Pa’s eyes, especially when it came to the farm. I tried my best to shake it off. “What’s wrong with Penny? Did Dr. Baxter say?”
“She’s in an awful way, Mare, and Pa’s worried we’re gonna lose the whole litter, maybe even Penny too. She won’t let Dr. Baxter even touch her, and he wants to give her some drugs to knock her out, but that’s risky. I thought you might be able to calm her down like you did earlier.”
“You thought of me, huh?” A small smile came to my face. It was the first time I could remember that Sturgin had looked to me for help, except for doing chores or something. I took off running, Sturgin on my heels.
When we reached the pig house, Dr. Baxter was leaning over the pig, trying to determine the problem and gauge her condition. He was a slight man, known to be agile and quick, which was clear as he maneuvered his way around the large pig. He wore a fresh button-up white shirt and pressed trousers, his hair in a short crew cut. for a man who often ended up on the wrong end of livestock, his appearance was always surprisingly clean. on his right arm, he wore a long rubber glove that went all the way past his elbow.
Pa was now in his undershirt and looked over as we barged into the pen. I handed him his shirt, which he took and began slipping onto his arms. I stood in the pen. Would Pa let me get closer to Penny?
He buttoned the shirt and began rolling the sleeves up. He twisted his mouth, biting his lip, his face creased. He turned his focus to me. “Maralee, now if you can help, that’s fine, but I don’t want you to get upset or something and bother Dr. Baxter, you hear?”
“Yes, sir,” I said as I took a deep breath of musky ammonia-filled air, and looked at the pig. I began to creep closer to Penny, who was obviously irritated with Dr. Baxter. She wallowed back and forth, snapping.
“I’d stay clear of her, if I were you,” Dr. Baxter said as he stood near Penny, his hands on his hips. The rubber glove crinkled around his right arm, making it look larger than his left. “She isn’t very receptive right now.”
I slowed my movements slightly, but continued crawling, settling near the sow’s head. I placed my hand on Penny’s neck again and rested it there. Penny shifted back and forth as I stared down into her eyes. I could feel her fear, her pain. The emotion hit me hard, and I couldn’t fight it. My eyes filled with tears.
“It’s going to be okay, Penny. You will get through this,” I said. A song popped into my head, one of the hymns that I had sung at church, when we used to go. Leaning over the sow, I sang softly:
“The Lord’s my Shepherd, I’ll not want;
He makes me down to lie
In pastures green;
He leadeth me
The quiet waters by.”
Penny stared up at me. She snorted a few times, but then closed her eyes, and quieted down.
Dr. Baxter took this opportunity to reach into the pig, his long rubber glove disappearing deep within her. “A piglet’s wedged sideways in the birth canal.”
He pushed and pulled inside the sow, trying to free the piglet. Penny stayed remarkably calm, my hand resting on her neck, as I repeated the hymn again.
“I think I got it. Come on.” Dr. Baxter withdrew his gloved hand. He held a small lifeless piglet, which he dropped on the dirt floor, bloody mucus dripping from it. “That one’s gone, but hopefully the problem is out.”
Pa crouched over, his hands on his knees. He didn’t look at the piglet on the floor, just stayed focused on Dr. Baxter. Sturgin had his hands in his hair, palms at his temples, blowing air out as he watched.
Dr. Baxter reached inside the pig again, and pulled out another dead one. Pa slapped his knee and groaned. Dr. Baxter continued…three, four, five, six lifeless bodies, all a purplish-blue color, sopped in milky, crimson slime. They created a grotesque lump on the pen’s dirt floor. The sight made me flinch, and I quickly looked away, focusing on Penny.
The pig began to squirm. Her body was contracting again, trying to birth the remaining piglets. Dr. Baxter removed his hand and rubbed her belly.
“That’s right, Mama. Push them out,” he said.
Penny did push and out came one more purplish mass, but then six small, pinkish creatures, their heads bobbing, bodies wiggling, alive. Pa straightened, placing his hands on his hips. Sturgin did the same, echoing his stance. I stopped singing, and stared down at my hand, my fingernails outlined in today’s field dirt, keeping it still on Penny’s neck.
Dr. Baxter roughly rubbed and wiped off each of the six pink ones and placed them near Penny’s teats. “Let’s see if they can suckle.” Each piglet made their way to a teat and began sucking frantically.
I leaned over to Penny’s ear. “Good job, Mama, you’ve got six babies now. The rest will be okay in Heaven.”
As the piglets nursed, Dr. Baxter peeled off the glove with a loud snap and grabbed a towel from his bag, cleaning his hands. Pa and Dr. Baxter began talking shop, about causes for the stillbirths and hopes for future litters. raising my head, I faced Sturgin, who was staring at me again, a smile across his face.
“You have a superpower when it comes to animals, Mare.”
I dropped my head back down toward Penny, trying my best to fight a rush of emotion. It was nice that Sturgin had noticed my efforts, but it wasn’t who I’d hoped would. A small whimper made me lift my head, curious, forcing me to look at the dreadful pile of lifeless piglets again.
“Is that another one?” Sturgin said, and jumped over Penny, heading to the repulsive pile.
I ducked unnecessarily at his abrupt action. “Be careful!” I pulled up my face in disgust as he began to recklessly dig through the lifeless bodies.
Pa and Dr. Baxter turned to see what Sturgin had found. He held up one of the piglets, which was still alive, but not in good condition. Its skin resembled a color that was only found on bad bruises. He delicately grasped the weak piglet, as it wiggled slightly and then drooped over in his hand.
Dr. Baxter took the piglet from Sturgin. He rubbed the piglet’s chest roughly, watching as it squirmed slightly in response. “This one seems to be alive, but I don’t know if it can suckle.” He placed the piglet near the others at Penny’s belly. The little piglet barely moved, slumping down the side of its mother. “That’s a shame. It’s too weak.”
“So you’re just gonna let it die?” Sturgin said, throwing his hands in the air.
“Not much to do, son. If it can’t eat, it will die,” Dr. Baxter sighed.
“What if we feed it?” Sturgin looked at me, causing me to pop up from my kneeling position. We both looked to Pa for guidance.
Pa looked at the piglet, and then at Sturgin. “I don’t think you understand what you are asking.”
“I know that a piglet needs to eat every hour or so for the first few days of life, and if Maralee can help, we can do it.”
“Yep!” I bobbed my head enthusiastically.
Pa rubbed the back of his neck, and looked over at Dr. Baxter.
The doctor chuckled, “It’s your call, Merle, but these kids seem to have a knack with animals, especially your girl. Might be a good lesson for ’em here.”
Pa took out his blue handkerchief and wiped his face. “Okay, but it can’t stay in the house. It’s a pig, not a pet.”
Sturgin put his hand out as Dr. Baxter gently placed the piglet into it. “Now it can’t warm itself yet. Get it in a blanket. And feed it with a dropper. Cow’s milk will be okay…see if it will drink,” Dr. Baxter advised.
Sturgin stared at Dr. Baxter, listening to his words with great attention. “Yes sir. Yes sir. Will do.” With the piglet cautiously in his hands, he briskly walked out of the pen. I smirked, watching him walk awkwardly toward the house.
I squatted down and rubbed Penny again. She had passed the placenta, signaling the end of the birthing event. Dr. Baxter had added it to the bloody pile, which I still avoided looking at. Penny was settling down now, napping as her piglets continued to nurse. I looked at Dr. Baxter. “Is she okay?”
Dr. Baxter squatted, his eyes shining brightly. “You tell me,” He chuckled. “Yes…she’s tired and possibly thirsty, but I think she’ll be okay.” He rubbed Penny’s back.
He stood and looked down at the pile of dead piglets. “It’s a shame. You want some help with this, Merle?” He pointed to the pile.
Pa looked at his face, not following his pointing finger. “Nah, Abe. I’ll take care of ’em.” Pa turned away from the pile as he spoke.
I brought more water to Penny, which was received well by the sow. “You’re okay, Penny,” I said strongly, “and you’ll be a great mama.” I rubbed the pig again and stood. “I think I’m gonna see how Sturgin’s doing with the piglet, if that’s alright?”
Pa looked at me and nodded. His eyes glistened and his smile widened just enough to show off the small dimple in his cheek, the one Ma called “his charmer.”
“Thanks for your help,” he said.
I stared back at him, soaking up his words like a dry sponge. I loved Pa and always worked hard to earn his approval. Even though it was a simple remark, it meant a lot—to be seen, not just for helping, but for doing something that mattered. Attention like that usually went to Sturgin. I smiled, holding the moment, knowing that it might slip away.
And sure enough, the awkwardness thickened between us. Pa broke our stare first, dropping his eyes to his boots. Then he turned to help Dr. Baxter with his bag. I let out a breath and left the pen behind, making my way to the house.
In Heart of the Green Leaf, Carla Harrison brings readers to the hot tobacco fields of North Carolina in the summer of 1964. At the center of the story is fourteen-year-old Maralee Truett, a girl growing up in a family shaped by hard work, silence, and pain. Her life has always followed the steady routines of farm work and family duty, but that begins to change as her father’s mental health worsens. His behavior becomes more unpredictable and frightening, and Maralee is forced to face truths that are far bigger than anything a child should have to carry. As family secrets rise to the surface, she must find the strength to protect herself and the people she loves.
Harrison’s writing is rich but accessible, filled with strong details that make the setting feel real. You can almost feel the heat, dust, and exhaustion of life on the farm. The tobacco fields are not just a backdrop; they shape the mood of the novel and reflect the pressure Maralee is living under. This strong sense of place will especially appeal to readers who enjoy historical fiction that feels grounded in everyday life rather than driven only by plot twists.
What makes the book stand out most is Maralee herself. She is a believable and sympathetic main character whose growth feels honest. Harrison shows her not as helpless, but as thoughtful, observant, and stronger than she first appears. The novel also handles heavy subjects like trauma, mental illness, and family silence with care. These themes are serious, but they are presented in a way that feels human rather than overly dramatic.
The pacing does slow somewhat in the middle, especially during scenes focused on daily farm chores. While these moments add realism and deepen the setting, they can briefly lessen the story’s momentum. Even so, they help build the world Maralee is trying to survive.
Overall, Heart of the Green Leaf is a heartfelt and atmospheric novel that will appeal most to readers of character-driven historical fiction, especially those who enjoy emotional family stories with resilient young heroines. It is a thoughtful debut about pain, survival, and the courage it takes to break free from generations of silence.