(Ella Corrigan has the weight of four generations laid burden solely on her shoulders. After her mother's accident, her father drifted to alcohol, leaving Ella to manage Greenpoole. She runs the plantation efficiently and treats her slaves with dignity. But marriage, expected for a belle of her standing, eludes her.

When Gentry Garland rides into Savannah from Texas, Ella's life brightens. Despite a contentious start, he and Ella fall in love. When Gentry mysteriously disappears, Ella, brokenhearted, and with feelings of shame for having loved him, hastily marries Victor Faircloth-a man whose proposals she has long avoided.

At Faircloth plantation, Ella witnesses depravities of the human spirit that stun her. Her own gentle family has owned slaves for generations but now she questions that institution for the first time, feeling a strange kinship with Victor's empty-eyed servants who are beginning to escape him one by one. Thrust upon her heart is the knowledge of how they disappear without a trace . . . when the mystery of Corrigan's Pool on her family's property is finally revealed.

Struggling against her husband's dictates and blackmail, worsened by bitter memories of Gentry Garland, Ella endures sadness deeper than any woman can bear. As Sherman's Union troops burn their way across Georgia and swarm onto her property and then into Savannah, Ella musters the strength of her family's heritage. Can she save herself and those who depend on her? What will she do when the past she has long blamed for her wretchedness steps unexpectedly out of the darkness to face her?

Suggested by Members

Recommended to book clubs by 2 of 2 members.