Under the Southern Sky Kristy Woodson Harvey

 In Under the Southern Sky by Kristy Woodson Harvey, Amelia Paxton investigates what becomes of abandoned embryos in fertility clinics in Palm Beach, Florida, as a feature story for her magazine. What she uncovers is so much more: her childhood friend Parker, who lost his wife to cancer three years ago, has forgotten about the embryos that he and his late wife Greer created to implant when she beat her battle with cancer, which never happened.

The fact that Amelia has just lost her husband to his lover does not make delivering the news about the embryos any easier. She finds that a grieving Parker has been stuck for three years, but when she tells him the news that he needs to make a decision about the fate of his four embryos, he becomes unstuck and starts to make plans for the embryos to be implanted in a surrogate as a way to bring his late wife back into his life.

Complicating their lifelong friendship is that unbeknownst to the other, Parker has always loved Amelia, literally the girl next door, and she has admired him ever since she took real notice of him when she was in college. But neither thinks the other could ever possibly fall in love with him or her.

Seeing that Parker’s plan to find a surrogate has brought him back to the living, Amelia decides she could do this for him: she could carry these babies and then get back to her life. What follows are twists, turns, complications, disappointments, then sudden realizations as both Amelia and Parker move forward in their lives. 

Under the Southern Sky is more than a romance. It is Southern women’s fiction with multiple subplots, a bit of mystery, a near loss, and a crazy aunt in the attic, er, East wing. Readers who enjoy Elin Hilderbrand, Mary Kay Andrews, and Mary Alice Monroe will find a similar experience with Harvey’s books.

Kristy Woodson Harvey is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s school of journalism and holds a master’s in English from East Carolina University. She and her mother Beth Woodson write a blog called Design Chic about home decorating. Harvey lives in North Carolina with her family.