Butternut Tree

Butternut Tree Farm-when Arianna's five-year-old son William was abducted, she never fully recovered from that shock for her entire life. When other children were born a few years later, she insisted that each one of them was a reincarnation of the deceased William. This story is narrated by a Mr. Abel Abel, the proprietor of The Butternut Tree Farm, an artist, handicapped because of an accident when he was a preteenager and who, over the years, made sketches and paintings of Arianna's children as they grew up in the house, next to his. He called the youngsters, The Prisoners of Butternut Heights, for he never saw them leave the premises during that entire length of time that they lived there, never saw them playing with other children, and apparently reared in total ignorance of what real life was like in the outside world. Their lives were drastically changed once they left the homestead, for then they were free to do as they pleased, sharing much happiness with their rich though mismatched marriage partners. Their new way of life took them on adventures they had never dreamed of participating in, filled with adventure, mystery, intrigue, romance, and even deception. Eventually, they themselves became parents, and once again, though a generation down the road, Arianna insisted that these new offsprings were also the incarnation of her abducted son William, leaving the entire family aghast at some of the unconventional antics that she committed. It was at a dinner, at their home, that Arianna disclosed family secrets to them that no one had ever known before, catapulting the family to a breaking point from which it would never recover, climaxing in a strange and tragic ending.