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As in her splendid adult debut, Waltzing in Ragtime, Eileen Charbonneau has written a rich and powerful historical novel of a family torn apart both by loss and by reunion.
In 1815 the Windover Plantation sits in triumph on the banks of the James River in southern Virginia, a symbol for the wealth and power of the vast Randolph empire.
But for ten years a pall has hung over this magnificent house, cast the day young Ethan Randolph went down on the merchant ship Ida Lee.
When Judith Mercer, a beautiful young Quaker woman, comes to Windover with a strange and damaged young man, the reunion is anything but joyful.
The Randolph family cannot believe that this crippled, wraith-like creature, flogged to the brink of death as a prisoner of the British Navy, is their long-lost boy.
With Judith's help, Ethan begins to regain his health and his rightful place as heir to the Randolph fortune.
But he also begins to fall in love with Judith, whose history is as traumatic as his own.
And she is a Quaker--how can she ever love a slaveholder?
"Ms. Charbonneau has surpassed fiction and taken the step toward great American literature." - Literary Times
July 15, 1997
