Minnie is a beautiful, shy thirty-year-old librarian who feels imprisoned by the town's borders, held captive by responsibility for her cantankerous, ill grandmother. Grammy cared for Minnie when she was small, orphaned at age six, and now Minnie must return the favor. Minnie is as embedded in Flowery Branch as the majestic oak that twists its varicose roots in the dry dust of town square.

Lawrence, who was reared in Flowery Branch but taken away in a cloud of mystery when only nine years old, returns to town amidst a flurry of attention, for Lawrence, though proud and aloof, is as handsome a man as has ever prowled the shaded avenues of the town. Minnie and Lawrence fall in love.

Flowery Branch loses its composure when violence comes to town, mirroring the world outside. When across the nation a rash of kids bring guns to school to commit violent acts, a skinhead in Flowery Branch plays copycat and kills a teacher in the process. When three men in Texas drag a black man behind their pick-up truck, tearing his body into shreds, a hate crime is acted out in Flowery Branch. Flowery Branch becomes a microcosm of the world outside, and the repercussions of violence and unrest ring through the town.

Minnie emerges from the shadows to become a leader in Flowery Branch's struggle to survive--a town with an undaunted spirit, determined to fight its own battles despite the sudden interference of shame and publicity. Minnie takes the lead by organizing local students to participate in their own ongoing therapy sessions, to heal themselves in their own time and way. The people of Flowery Branch learn to work together, to ventilate their anger and concerns, to evolve in their own image with fresh hope for the future.

Minnie sees Lawrence as her knight in shining armor, the embodiment of the romance she seeks. But Lawrence is emotionally crippled and stumbles as he tries to return Minnie's love. Minnie had always believed that there was a place to go someday, a place where her fortune waited, where romance bloomed, and the air was fresh with promise. She learns, as her relationship with Lawrence begins to unravel, that life speaks simple truths, and she must learn to listen.

The South of today lives within the pages of A Place to Go Someday. The reader will delight in its wise and warm-hearted people who understand that life drizzles joy and pain in different measure, who accept--in fact, welcome--the idiosyncrasies of their neighbors, the charm of eccentric behavior. Perhaps the reader will smile and say, "only in the South." For there is no other world like it.