Carol grows up in beautiful Montana, but her family is fraught with problems. When her parents separate and her mother dies she's sent to an orphanage. Longing to belong to a family again, Carol begs her grandmother to take her in, but she soon learns home is not as great as she envisioned. Her grandmother is unfit to raise her, and her father is an alcoholic. Eventually, Carol is sent to a reform school. When Carol gets a job as a nanny, the man of the house promptly gets her pregnant. After having children, she finds herself battling postpartum depression, and she enters a mental hospital in Oregon. Now, Carol must deal with a series of past marriages, a pending divorce and life's painful memories. Despite it all, Carol beats the odds, going to college and overcoming her demons. Everything is on the right track when one of her children dies. She ends up developing a children's bereavement program and summer camp. Join Carol as she proves that even someone with a tainted past can inspire others and make a difference in The Bastard Tree.

Discusses new species of flowering trees, useful for graduate students and academic researchers in the field of life sciences.

In this second novel in the Gloucester Trilogy, John Palermo battles his way through emotional and professional conflicts in this gripping tale by acclaimed author Joseph M. Orlando. Having lost his beloved wife, Connie, John struggles with life as a single father. His emotions are palpable as he wrestles with his devotion to his lost wife, duty to his children, and his burgeoning feelings for a new woman. Professionally, John takes on the case of his nemesis, Captain Joe Amalfi, who is found floating in a life raft alone in the icy Atlantic when his fishing boat sinks with his crew still aboard. Amalfi's emotional turmoil after this event is one challenge, among many, to John's struggle to help the widows and children of the men on Amalfi's boat, many of whom were John's boyhood friends. As Amalfi's condition worsens, John seeks to unravel the mystery of what happened on the boat that terrible day, sparking a gripping courtroom battle filled with surprise twists and turns and an ending that John could never have predicted. The Bastard's Weapon takes the reader on an emotional roller coaster from beginning to end, all set among the beautiful fishing community of Gloucester, Massachusetts. It is a novel for any reader who is intrigued by the power of love, the fight of the righteous, and the true human drama played out each day in the courtrooms of America.