This sequel to Julian Green's epic novel of the ante-bellum South, The Distant Lands, opens with the last tense moments of peace that led up to the final confrontation and all-out war between the North and South. As one state after another secedes from the Union, the gracious-living aristocracy of the old South goes on dancing and feasting and intriguing among themselves as never before. Once again we meet the personages of The Distant Lands: the aunts and uncles and the cousins, the omniscient Charlie Jones, the sinister Miss Llewelyn and, above all, Elizabeth, the beautiful widowed Englishwoman, living with her little son in slightly reduced splendor in Savannah, Georgia. The picture which the nonagenarian Julian Green paints is a nostalgic, poetic and romantic one of a world doomed to extinction but still scintillating brightly, engrossed in its own courtly passions and genteel observances. This feast of story-telling is partly based upon reminiscences of the old South told to him by the author's own 'Southern belle' mother, with a historical background that is both authentic and enthralling.

The author, born to American parents living in Paris, recounts his life and the influences on his writing.

Immersed in her adopted South's aristocratic antebellum society, English-born Elizabeth Escridge is ill-prepared for the Civil War that is to destroy that world forever.