"Unforgettable." The Washington Post Book World. The Civil War is still twenty years away when Rose, an escaped mulatto slave girl, arrives in the town of Pequot Landing. Soon after, a school for "colored misses" is established. This fuels a firestorm between the abolitionist Talcott family and the wealthy Grimes family, owners of mills that depend on slave-picked cotton. Into the blaze steps schoolmistress Georgiana Ross and rakehell sea captain...