“Do not sell the angel with the smeared lips,” Granny Flo instructs her friend Rose, as she leaves to buy supplies to make more of the dolls that hung on the tree growing right through the middle of her house in Crystal Springs, Arkansas. Even though its lips are smeared, Granny knows there is something special about this doll—something in the way her eyes sparkle. The doll seems to change those who come in contact with it for the better. What could make the doll so magical?
