In September 1865 Eli Calhoon, Lieutenant Colonel, Confederate
States Army, returnsed to his war-ravished plantation home, of
Camellia Creek, outside Port Gibson, Mississippi, resolved to begin
again. But Mississippi, like the rest of the South, lies prostrate
in the wake of a devastating conflict that wasted its population
and destroyed what had been, only four years earlier, the third
strongest economy in the world. More troubling, the South's
recovery is now overseen by a victorious enemy determined that the
economy, as well as the South's influence within the Union, will
never be revived. For Southerners, getting a spring crop in the
field is as far out of reach as is the payment of five years' back
taxes, demanded by Congress demands from the states in Rebellion to
pay for the war it waged against them. Orphaned Alice Shelto has
come to Mississippi with her aunt and uncle, Betty and Peter
Franklin. Peter is a speculator in search of investment. A veteran
of the war, who'd seen duty in Mississippi and Louisiana, he knows
opportunity exists in the defeated South. His preference for a home
for his wife, daughter, and niece is the lovely bayou plantation
home called Camellia Creek. outside Port Gibson, Mississippi. In
company with the Franklins is Peter's widowed sister-in-law
Eustacia from New York and her son, Jonathan, who Peter believes is
the perfect match for Alice, heiress to a fortune. Betty Shelton is
the sister of Alice's widowedr father, Jacob Shelton, and his two
sons were killed in action during the late war, fighting for the
Union.to bring the rebellious states back into the Union. The
losses have left Alice in despair so deep her aunt fears Alice
might take her own life. Seth Parker, Major, United States Marine
Corps, has come to Mississippi at the request of a friend and
military senior to investigate the murder of a U.S. Treasury agent,
which military authorities in the state believemay ties into cotton
thefts rampant among the white army officers stationed in
Mississippi. The powers that be prefer a Southerner be found to
blame, but his immediate the senior officer is not so sure. To
investigate the death, Seth is given a troop of nine men, all
colored members of Mississippi's Loyal Native Guard, for the most
part ex-slaves recruited into the Union army during the war.
Desperate times call for desperate measures, and in a lawless South
where justice is arbitrary and order is maintained by the
unprincipled and undisciplined, desperate acts measures are gambles
that sometimes pay off. When an indiscretion lands the lovely Alice
into the hands of a determined Eli Calhoon, he blackmails her into
marriage, taking her person and her money, and brings her to
Camellia Creek, where she is haunted by Jocelyn LeBlanc, an
ill-fated beauty who reputedly took her own lifedied under
mysterious circumstances decades earlier. Jocelyn's unresolved
purpose inIn addition to Jocelyn's ghostly presence, Alice's life
is overshadowed by war's aftermath, intrigue, murder, and jealousy,
and greed which threaten Alice's new-found desire to live, a desire
ignited by the very man who could be plotting to snuff it out.
General
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