Lewis Rand

Johnston, an American novelist, wrote books that combine romance with history. She is chiefly remembered for having and holding, a story of colonial Virginia, and its successor, Audrey. Lewis Rand begins: The tobacco-roller and his son, pitched their camp beneath a gum tree, upon the edge of the wood. It was October, and the gum was the color of blood. Behind it rolled the autumn forest; before it stretched a level of broom-sedge, bright ochre in the light of the setting sun. The road ran across this golden plain, and disappeared in a league-deep wood of pine. From an invisible clearing came a cawing of crows. The sky was cloudless, and the evening wind had not begun to blow.