A neighbor handed over a monstera plant the day we moved to Asheville. Calling him a plant was generous. He was a stick. A tattered, road-weary, Charlie Brown Christmas tree of a stick that most people would have left on the curb without a second thought. We named him Harvey. Watered him. Watched him survive to something substantial. And then, when he was ready, he told us - without words, the way plants do - that it was time to start sharing him.

Cuttings went out to friends, family, strangers who just needed something alive in their corner. Pieces of Harvey took root in homes across cities and states. Each one growing at its own pace. Each one quietly witnessing the life happening around it. This is a book about those lives. Pieces of Harvey is a collection of stories branching from a single root - real moments, honestly told, from people connected by nothing more obvious than a plant on a shelf. A soldier finding his way back from the soul-shattering weight of war. A community blindsided by a catastrophic mountain flood.

An ultramarathoner chasing something across 70 miles of trail he hasn't quite named yet. A sister who came back from the edge of everything, changed. A first heartbreak. A first betrayal. A pandemic that made the walls close in and the important things suddenly visible. Harvey witnessed all of it. He never said a word. That's the nature of a cutting - it carries the DNA of the original, but grows in new light, shaped by whoever is doing the watering.

Each piece of Harvey is its own story. Each story is its own life. And somewhere underneath all of it, the same root. The stories are different. The root is the same. Harvey's still growing. So are his cuttings. And there are lives yet to be known.