About the Book

Book: What You Said to Me

Author: Olivia Newport

Genre: Christian Fiction

Release Date: November 2020

Book 4 in the Tree of Life Series: A Father-Daughter Genealogy Team Link Faith Journeys on Family Trees

When 15-year-old Tisha Crowder gets caught shoplifting, attorney Nolan Duffy tries to protect her from consequences that could rattle her already troubled life. His daughter, Jillian, feels like she’s the one being punished instead—by having Tisha assigned to work with her on a backlog of genealogy files. Tisha doesn’t seem interested in taking the job seriously, and Jillian’s patience wears thin. Besides, everyone in Canyon Mines knows the Crowder family has experienced generations of brokenness. Then a sliver of hope turns up in long-ago words in plain sight, challenging shrouded assumptions about Tisha’s family. Now Jillian is the one who can walk with Tisha back to 1893 and uncover where everything went wrong in the first place—and save her from the past.

What You Said to Me is the fourth book in the Tree of Life series by Olivia Newport. You’ll want to return to the lovely Colorado mountain town of Canyon Mines again and again to explore and celebrate unforgettable family stories that will inspire you to connect with your own family histories and unique faith journeys.

Click here to get your copy!

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 Pikes Peak.

More from Olivia

Careful Words

“You didn’t just say that.” Or, “I can’t believe you said that.”

Have you ever said that in retort to someone whose comment offended or wounded? I know I have. But what cuts me even more deeply is when I say to myself, “I can’t believe I just said that.”

The words of a parent at wit’s end, a spouse harboring hurt, a friend saddened by misunderstanding, an employee feeling undercut—they have all been my words. And they came out too fast to swallow back before they did their damage.

I hope I have also had the words of a parent who set aside busyness to listen, a spouse offering loving encouragement, a friend checking in with someone going through a tough patch, a coworker curious to see how I could help rather than compete. Those are the kinds of words I’ve never regretted, never had to repent of, never had to do rebuild from.

I certainly didn’t write What You Said to Me because I think I get it right all the time or even most of the time. Far from it! In our culture of rushing and achieving and—let’s face it, sometimes just getting through the demands of the day—sometimes our words are the last thing we are careful with. Yet they have the longest lasting consequence in our relationships and families—sometimes for generations. The dual-timeline story traces how words that injure became a pattern in one family line until one girl finally fought back to find healing for her future.

My challenge for myself, and all who read What You Said to Me, is to be the person who speaks healing words of hope so that “I can’t believe you said that” becomes “Thank you for saying that.”

If you have a particularly poignant experience of how another’s words impacted you, I’d love to hear from you.

Olivia Newport

MY REVIEW

This has been a very good series and I am very sad to see it end. I have enjoyed following the daughter and dad team as they shuffle back and forth in time. It has been intriguing to learn about genealogy and the secrets that are uncovered. Nolan and Jillian are a great duo and their desire to help others is contagious.

I didn’t know what to expect when Tisha comes on the scene. With a chip on her shoulders this fifteen year old will be hard to reach. The intensity of this story is how past generations do influence the future if the generational curse is not broken. Oh how I felt for Tisha when her mom called her stupid. There was never a day growing up that I didn’t hear how stupid I was and that I would never amount to anything. Like Tisha I figured why bother when everyone expected to see you fail. When I read, “ We all have reasons for the ways we express how we feel, even if we don’t understand them,” I understood that Tisha was acting out because she was hurt. Her desire to be accepted and loved is evident throughout the story. Words do sting and it is hard for that pain to go away. Can Nolan and Jillian make a difference in Tisha’s life?

When we travel back in time to 1893 we meet a family on the brink of financial disaster. Mining in the town has taken a hit and caused stores to go out of business, banks to close, people losing their jobs and hopelessness covering the entire towns people. I witnessed the collapse of a town and the despair the people felt as the author described with great detail what it may have been like during this time period. Desperate men trying to survive and a family seeing their future turn bleak makes this story so hard to stop reading.

I knew there was going to be twists but some took me by surprise. Every action had a reaction and this story is full of bad decisions, desperate decisions and decisions that tear families apart. There are parts in the story where I became angry because men were being blamed for unforeseen demise in economy. That hatred seemed to continue in the family for generations and cause the women to dislike or mistrust men. As you read the story you will see where one woman is so disgusted with her husband’s decisions that she basically turns her back on him. How sad that she became bitter and couldn’t see that her husband was trying to make a bad situation better?

The ending is bitter sweet and as I finished the last page, tears fell down my cheeks. It is a beautiful story of overcoming obstacles in your life and finding courage to accept what cannot be changed. Tisha is a strong young woman and even though her life has been filled with words that hurt and made her feel unwanted, she now can be proud of who she has become . We don’t get to choose our family, but we do choose whether to forgive or let the past ruin our future.

I received a copy of this book from Celebrate Lit. The review is my own opinion.