Magnolia Tree

In 1847, young Letty Banks finds herself trying to protect her baby half-sister, Ocilla, the daughter of the slave girl who was Letty's childhood friend. She succeeds, but, her father warns her, if she sets one foot off White Pine plantation, Ocilla will die. So when Letty meets Yankee entrepreneur and amateur balloonist Thorn Bradley, she knows a love affair is impossible. Years pass, the war's in full swing, and Thorn literally drops out of the sky (he is on balloon reconnaissance for the Union forces) and into Letty's life again. She'd finally left White Pines with the blacksmith, Caleb, to build a new life in the Georgia backwoods. But her old life catches up with her as she becomes the enemy of a vicious, violent preacher who's not a little like her late, unlamented father. With long stretches of separation for the star-crossed lovers and real insight into plantation life and the entanglements of a slave-holding family, this is by no means a traditional formula romance. Although it could have been 100 pages longer, Kirkland's (The Artful Heir) Civil War historical is a good, taut story of an independent, determined woman, wonderfully told. (Sept.)