The Learnin' Tree

This is a story of a young man whose life has been transformed and overcome with family lies, betrayal, and finally the ultimate consequence as the result of this. The book explores the failure to honor children and the wounds that continue long into the adult life. It is the crux of these wounds that creates the motivating force for dishonesty, cruelty, secrecy, misery, and neglect. Clifton Everett has led a complicated and unfulfilled childhood. The story begins at his father's funeral where his mother, manipulative and beautiful, presents him with a wooden cigar box containing the secrets of his abortive youth that stimulate the painful recollection of his journey through life. Just when he was beginning to rise in the world of professionalism as a lawyer, Clifton's father forces him to withdraw money he desperately needs from a trust account resulting in an overdraft that is an ethics violation and a felony. Stripped of his license to practice law and placed on probation, Clifton repossesses a disco parlor that is hidden in his assets and which houses the Learnin' Tree in the rear of the building that teaches the youth in the neighborhood how to deal in drugs and prostitution. He is framed for possession of cocaine and sentenced to the federal penitentiary. When he is released he joins with an old member of the disco parlor that is a dockworker and through the pilferage of misplaced cargo establishes a global empire that infringes on and threatens powerful individuals.