"A novel that will have been worth the wait for Gibbon's fans or anyone else with a passionate interest in the Civil War." — The Oregonian (Portland)

"Haunting...a rare jewel...Kaye Gibbons has gone from being a wonderful, fascinating novelist to a national treasure." — San Antonio Express-News

"Horace said that our stories should aim to instruct and delight...Kaye Gibbons has achieved both on every page." — Charles Frazier, author of Cold Mountain

"A master storyteller...Margaret Mitchell's blunderbuss epic...can't hold a sweet-potato candle to these vivid pages." — San Francisco Chronicle

“Deeply satisfying...Gibbons’ most fully realized novel to date...a muscular narrative that humanizes all sides of that bloody conflict—North and South, black and white, male and female...a robust novel that deserves to be set on the shelf alongside Cold Mountain.” — Orlando Sentinel

“Gibbons’s depiction of the war’s impact on those who fight it and those who suffer it is masterful. She has a gift for focusing on the telling detail, the seemingly trivial incident that suddenly explodes all the rhetoric about freedom and states’ rights and noble causes...Kaye Gibbons has crafted a vivid portrait of a woman who—despite—or perhaps because of—the sorrows weighing down her life, has truly lived. Emma Garnet is, finally, a woman to be envied.” — Richmond Times-Dispatch

“A fascinating story...Kaye Gibbons goes back to the days of the Civil War to depict the life of another extraordinary woman...A reader couldn’t ask for better company than Emma.” — USA Today

“A vivid account of a gentle woman who desperately wants to put her brutal childhood behind her but finds her life ripped apart by the Civil War...Gibbons is a masterful writer, one of the country’s best...[Her] novel provides a realistic picture of nineteenth century Southern life and the horrors of war.” — Greensboro News & Record

“Gibbons is continuing the fine tradition she established with her previous novels. . . . Like Eudora Welty, Gibbons captures the cadence of a time gone by, yet she makes the characters seem entirely modern. . . . The message is well worth the effort it takes to slip into a more refined time that was, ironically, the nation’s bloodiest.” — San Jose Mercury News

Emma Garnet Tate Lowell, a plantation owner's daughter, grows up in a privileged lifestyle, but it's not all roses. Her family's prosperity is linked to the institution of slavery, and Clarice, a close and trusted family servant, exposes Emma to the truth and history of their plantation and how it brutally affected the slave population.

Her father, Samuel P. Tate, has an aggressive and overpowering persona that intimidates many people -- including Emma. But she refuses to conform to his ideals and marries a prominent young doctor. Together they face the horrors of the Civil War, nursing wounded soldiers, as Emma begins the long journey toward her own recovery from the terrible forces that shaped her father's life.