One Call Before Goodbye
Some stories start with a bang. This one starts with a golf ball that disappears into thin air.
It’s 2008 in Warrior, Alabama. Eric is a few weeks away from marrying Caitlyn, and his best friends Lucas and Josh are determined to give him a proper send-off. Then a storm rolls in, lightning cracks over the old oak tree behind Lucas’s house, a strange purple light shows up in the grass, and Eric vanishes.
Not kidnapped. Not lost. Gone. Into yesterday.
Meanwhile, the story keeps circling back to 2002 at Corner High School, where a nervous kid with a phone number on a scrap of paper meets a girl named Kaitlyn. Instant messages. A crawfish boil in Birmingham. A first kiss during a Remy Zero set. Graduation day, and a promise to meet in the parking lot at 5:55.
You can probably guess that those five minutes matter.
Five Minutes Sooner is a clean, coming-of-age time travel novel about friendship, first love, regret, and the moments that end up carrying more weight than they should. It asks a question most of us have asked at 2 a.m.: if you could go back and change one small thing, would you? And would it actually fix anything?
It’s a small-town Alabama story with a sci-fi engine under the hood. Real roads, real towns, real 2002 dial-up internet. Three friends, one mysterious rock, and a lot of very questionable decisions involving jumper cables.
No language you’d have to explain to your grandmother. Just a story that will make you laugh, make you think, and probably make you want to call somebody you love.
Originally published as Under the Oak Tree. Same story, new name.
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Get the original edition on Amazon while it’s still available under its original title.
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I’m putting the whole Five Minutes Series on this blog, one chapter at a time. Drop your email and every new chapter lands in your inbox the day it goes up, plus the true stories I probably shouldn’t tell at church.
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The Five Minutes Series
- Five Minutes Sooner: One Call Before Goodbye (you are here)
- Five Minutes Later: The Future We Broke
- Five Minutes Forever: The Cost of Never Dying