.. .This story centers around Isabelle, a woman recently bereft of her Civil War beau, and a journalist named Paul Delahoussaye who has come to the family home of Belle Ombre to return a packet of loveletters Isabelle had written to her fiance. He has fallen in love with her through his surreptitious reading of the letters.

Also residing at Belle Ombre are the deceptive and graciously Machiavellian Aunt Delora, her great-uncle Babcock Vasseur and his wife Lydie Vee, a young and rather mischievous cousin Euphrasie and a vital assortment of former slaves who still live at Belle Ombre.

Almost immediately a murder (?) and then another takes place and Delora asks Paul to stay on and use his skills as a journalist to find out who is behind this second death. Family secrets are revealed as more sinister things seem to be going on behind the scenes at this plantation home. … Jodi Cox Guerra