Middy Sweet Young, a wealthy widow, returns to her hometown in Northeast Georgia in search of her youth, lured by a dreamy wish shared with Luke Mercer, her high school boyfriend:
One day we’ll be together…
The Forever Wish of Middy Sweet is the story of that prophecy-the former beauty queen and the retired history teacher reuniting fifty years after her vow. It is a prophecy that will haunt Luke. A widower, he has settled comfortably in Creel as a father and grandfather, as a friend to such people as the barber Roy Kennedy, as a surprising and unlikely football legend, as the local historian, as a dedicated volunteer for the library. In a small town where core values have remained relatively unchanged, Luke is the model citizen-quiet, reflective, patient, caring-yet Middy’s sudden and unexpected appearance in his life brings with it uncertainty and confusion. He does not know her life has been that of an oppressed trophy wife to a controlling lawyer, or that she has chosen him to be her guide to re-live hallowed memories of youth. He does not know she would share with him unsettling experiences, from her mother’s alcoholism to her husband’s cruelty. He does not know that hidden in the exuberance of her return to Creel is the destiny of a fragile reality. And he does not know he will be drawn back into his own memories–boyhood, college, his life spent with is late wife, Hannah. For Luke, Middy’s search becomes his discovery, leaving him to wonder if she had been right: What might have been is a haunting of the imagination.