Cedar Grove

Strength is her weakness. Weakness is her weapon.

Creole beauty Uranie Delacroix has spent her entire life on Cedar Grove, a prosperous sugar plantation downriver from New Orleans. There, she was raised an equal to her half-sister, and together, they’ve lived the life of privileged Southern belles, with all the refinements afforded members of the Louisiana planter society.

Rumblings of war usher in Ranie’s nineteenth birthday, and while her sister fantasizes about the sisters marrying and raising their children on Cedar Grove, Ranie faces the reality that the law forbids her to marry a white man and all black men of Ranie’s acquaintance are enslaved. This truth, among many others, draws focus to the vast disparity that their isolation at Cedar Grove had protected, but that always existed between her and her sister.

When the War Between the States threatens the stability of the South, Ranie’s father can no longer insulate her from the realities of the world. As one by one the Southern states secede, he’s forced to accelerate his well-placed, albeit reluctant intentions for her. In doing so, he must reveal a secret life that confuses, yet somehow comforts her.

Her determination drives her to do things she’d thought herself incapable. Her strength enables her to do what others refuse to do, and to stand up to those intent upon causing harm to her family, even as she openly opposes the very institution for which the South so vehemently fights.