Autumn whispered to the wind, "I fall but always rise again."

For a long time, tree sprite Scarlet Oak has watched autumn fall and rise in the same way amidst her forested society of sprites. Wingless and bound to live and die with her birth oak, Horace, she longs for a deeper existence. Then, in 1977, her world is shaken when an autistic boy wanders into her woodland and they share a soulful moment before he takes his life on her tree. Smis, a Grim Reaper, arrives to usher the boy's spirit to the Dark, but Scarlet insists that the boy did not intend to die. In a rare show of mercy, Smis gives her one year to find proof that the boy's spirit belongs to the Light.

Scarlet leaves behind all that she has ever known. Passing as a teenage girl, she branches into the grieving hearts of the boy's parents on a Maryland farm. But as secrets, fantasies, lies, and beautiful truths shadow her quest, the stage is set for an unimaginable fate to fall . . . when autumn rises again.

Narrated by three memorable characters-Scarlet, Horace, and Smis-Scarlet Oak is a mystery, a love story, and a tribute to resilience and the unique gifts that every soul has to offer.