Introduction

A taut, thrilling adventure story about buried treasure, a manhunt, and a woman determined to make a new life for herself in the old west.

It's the 19^th century on the Gulf Coast, a time of opportunity and lawlessness. After escaping the Texas brothel where she'd been a virtual prisoner, Lucinda Carter heads for Middle Bayou to meet her lover, who has a plan to make them both rich, chasing rumors of a pirate's buried treasure.

Meanwhile Nate Cannon, a young Texas policeman with a pure heart and a strong sense of justice, is on the hunt for a ruthless killer named McGill who has claimed the lives of men, women, and even children across the frontier. Who--if anyone--will survive when their paths finally cross?

As Lucinda and Nate's stories converge, guns are drawn, debts are paid, and Kathleen Kent delivers an unforgettable portrait of a woman who will stop at nothing to make a new life for herself.

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Excerpt

Lucinda stepped onto a crate, examining the negatives more closely. Each boxed-in pane of glass showed men of all ages, and more than a few boys, posing in front of the same static background; some sporting pistols, others holding rifles, all hinting at the prideful, boastful sentiments in those moments before they had ventured into armed conflict. The resulting photographs, if they had been printed and framed, elaborately or simply, draped with medals of sacrifice or bands of black crepe, would have held a kind of paradox; the appearance of life, but inexorably a proof of what had departed, never to return.

The sun had begun to bleed out the images of the soldiers. It had been five years since the end of the war, and some of the portraits would have been made at the start of the conflict in sixty-one. Soon the plates would be scoured clean, and it would be a kind of second death. Now, whenever she hid in the greenhouse, she would never again imagine the glass was merely dirty. She would always see the men floating above her head. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

1) Discuss the reasons for Lucinda's fascination with the man in her life.

2) Did Lucinda choose her life, or was it thrust upon her?

3) How did your feelings for the main characters---Lucinda, George Deerling, Dr. Tom, Nate---change over the course of the book?

4) What was your first memory of reading a book about Texas?

5) Dr. Tom says, "But we're all together in the same black soup, which makes us all related somehow." Do you agree with that statement?

6) Do you agree with Tobias when he says, "You and me, an upstairs girl and a slave that was, we are the new citizens for the coming of days"?

7) How did gun violence shape the men and women of 1870 Texas?

8) What are some thoughts about the experiences of black men and women, many of them freed slaves, after the Civil War?

9) Are there themes in the book---gun violence, the immigrant experience, hostility to other ethnic groups---that resonate today?

Weblinks

»	Author Kathleen Kent's web site
»	Publisher's Book Info

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