Crabapple

The story centers on Tony Boy, a blonde, freckled kid in post-WWII Alabama, who is heading in the wrong direction. The predictable troubled trajectory for a boy from a dysfunctional family is interrupted by a large and mysterious woman. She enters his life by pulling him into her small house adjacent to his Tuscaloosa elementary school after catching him stealing her backyard crabapples. This chapter in Tony Boy's life might be called, Let the Life-Changing Lessons Begin ' After meeting this solitary figure named Romaine, Tony Boy experiences a series of return visits to The Witch's Cottage' and discovers an incredible new world a world he would have never discovered had not this woman, who has a dark past of her own, taken him under her wing."