In "Under the Heaven Tree," journalist and poet William Bridges paints a rich picture of growing up in two Indiana towns, Franklin and Vincennes, from the 1930s through the 1950s. It is the story of an unusual family of artists, of a secret marriage, of hidden scandal, and the characters who once populated small towns, including the creator of the world's only six-person harmonica and a man who climbed the town monument to disarm the Civil War soldier. Most of all, it is a valentine to the writer's mother and father, and to a long-lost America.