Review: Beneath the Broken Oak

Written By Celia

BENEATH THE BROKEN OAK
By Lori Altebaumer


Mystery / Romance
Publisher: One Thousand Hills Publishing
Pages: 400
Publication Date: February 22, 2025

 

SYNOPSIS

Trees don’t heal. They seal.

But Forester Jodee Trevaine isn’t a tree. The wounds of abandonment she’s spent years denying will be ripped open the night she witnesses a child’s abduction.

The hardscrabble West Texas town of El Hueso, where keeping secrets is what keeps you alive, is the last place one would expect to find healing.

Until her job brings her there for a dying tree. 

With new friends and the unexpected reacquaintance with the man she loved and left, Jodee has everything to gain—and just as much to lose—as she races against time to rescue the boy.

Could it be that her roots go deeper than she realized into the soil of EL Hueso?




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ABOUT THE AUTHOR


Award-winning novelist and Amazon Top New Release author Lori Altebaumer is a lifelong Texan whose family roots run deep in the Lone Star state.  Her writing bends the rules for modern Christian fiction, telling bold stories of good and evil in a broken world.





There’s a little bit of almost everything in Lori Altebaumer’s Beneath the Broken Oak. In this story of second chances and mystery, we see Jodee Trevaine come across an old flame, Blue Sunday, and almost immediately afterwards, be witness to the kidnapping of a young boy. The story is layered as we are shown two timelines, past and present, and the usage of multiple POVs also provides us with a thick story of intrigue and emotion.

I found Beneath the Broken Oak to be quite the page-turner. I didn’t see where the story was going, and I am always thankful for that in mystery and thriller stories. There was a theme of Christian fiction in this narrative, but I didn’t find that it deterred from the story itself. And although I am a romance-lover at heart, the romance we do get to in Broken Oak also does not deter from the tale. Forgiveness, surprises, and intrigue are ultimately what is at the core of this story.

All in all, I believe readers of mystery ficiton would truly enjoy this story; I know that I did.

To learn more about the book, look for #LoneStarLitBeneathTheBrokenOak on your preferred social media platform.


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Celia