About the Book

A Father-Daughter Genealogy Team Link Present to Past on Family Tree

Meri flunks out of medical school—and runs from her parents. Genealogist Jillian Parisi-Duffy’s digging traces the family long tradition of doctors to an ancestor saved during a yellow fever outbreak in Memphis in 1878. As Meri’s family closes in, Jillian gets the final puzzle pieces in place just in time for them all to learn the truth. The Inn at Hidden Run is the first book in the Tree of Life series. Readers will come back to backdrop of a lovely mountain town of Canyon Mines again and again to explore and celebrate unforgettable family stories that inspire them to connect with their own family histories and unique faith journeys.

Click here to purchase your copy!

My Thoughts:

This story takes on the topic of genealogy and shows just how fun and interesting that can be. Jillian is a genealogist and lives with her lawyer dad Nolan. Together they are quite a team, especially when a very reclusive stranger by the name of Meri comes into their small town and lives. We also have very nosy Nia and her husband the inn owners who have hired Meri at the Inn. Nia was not necessarily a favorite character of mind as I felt she was just too intrusive. I also felt bad for Jillian as well, she was a quiet, very work oriented person who may have needed to get out a bit more, however everyone was constantly interrupting her work schedule; especially Nia.

Anyway, I found Jillian’s job fascinating and how she worked on family trees for her clients, of whom she had several, and each of the clients were interested in genealogy for different reasons. Jillian was very much a detective. Jillian uses her skills as a genealogist to help Meri for a possible reconciliation with her loved ones by tracing back through her tree when the occupation of doctor became so important.

This is a time slip novel. We not only have a contemporary story but also a historical one that takes place in 1878 during the outbreak of yellow fever in Memphis, Tennessee. Both stories tie together.

This is just the beginning of the Tree of Life series and I look forward to more research that Jillian will dig up.

I received a copy of this novel from the publisher. I was not required to post a positive review and all views and opinions are my own.

About the Author

Olivia Newport’s novels twist through time to find where faith and passions meet. Her husband and twentysomething children provide welcome distraction from the people stomping through her head on their way into her books. She chases joy in stunning Colorado at the foot of the Rockies, where daylilies grow as tall as she is.

More from Olivia

Of Family Lines and Family Lore

I suppose it all started in a cemetery.

Once, while a group of relatives were visiting a cemetery, one of my cousins and I wandered off and looked at all sorts of graves, speculating about the names we read and the lives they represented. We were duly scolded both for separating from our families, which caused some consternation, and for being disrespectful—though I think the second accusation was a false one!

Just because we were young children didn’t mean we were disrespecting the dead. Quite the opposite. We were respecting lives long forgotten with our curiosity about who they were and what legacies they left.

These days a lot of people are interested in genealogy. Entire TV series spin around the theme, and DNA kits show up in Christmas stockings. Lost branches of family trees find the main trunk—sometimes with big surprises.

My new Tree of Life series is set in the backdrop of a lovely Colorado mountain town I hope you’ll want to visit often, where a father-daughter genealogy team link present to past on family trees and characters learn about who they are, where they come from, and their unique faith journeys as they discover their own Tree of Life.

It all starts with The Inn at Hidden Run. When Meri arrives in Canyon Mines because she wants to run away from her family, true answers come from understanding the past that generations have forgotten—the accounts from another time and place no longer handed down but that still form the backbone of the family’s story.

What’s the backbone of your family’s history? How is it shaping your own future?