A Charleston belle with slavery on her conscience. A slave with rebellion in her heart. In South Carolina in 1858, no friendship could be more dangerous.
Caro Jarvie’s father, who owns her, loves her and educates her. He raises her for a life she can never have-as a wealthy planter’s daughter. When he dies, he can’t protect her, and she is cast back into slavery. But she can’t forget her father’s promise. As she grieves for him, she yearns for freedom.
Emily Jarvie, daughter of a wealthy planter, is content with slavery-until she inherits a slave cousin in Caro. Her conscience goads her into an act of charity. She gives Caro a shawl. She is shocked-and transformed-when Caro has the audacity to ask her for a book instead.
Unlikely cousins, unlikely friends, Emily and Caro become unlikely allies as Caro glimpses a path to freedom and Emily begins to question slavery itself.
As South Carolina hurtles toward secession, will their bond destroy their lives-or set them both free?

One woman abhors her past. The other fights for freedom. Will their battle for emancipation leave them casualties of war?
South Carolina, 1862. Emily Jarvie is determined to send her family’s slave-owning history to its grave. When the Union Army captures the Sea Islands, she returns to the south to teach the former slaves, part of the Army’s unusual experiment in racial equality. Despite her loyalty to the Union cause, her Southern heritage raises a brick wall of Yankee suspicion.
Oberlin College, Ohio. Fugitive slave Caro Jarvie longs to pick up a rifle to fight for freedom. But as a woman, she has to settle for reporting on the war second-hand from the Union Army camp in the Sea Islands. When she learns that Harriet Tubman is in South Carolina to lead a military mission to free slaves, Caro seizes her chance to enter the fray.
As Emily and Caro struggle to bury the past, old loves and new flames open a door to the future they both hope for. But with the war for America’s soul raging ever closer, each woman finds her strength tested as she strives for a better tomorrow.
Can they forge a legacy of love and acceptance during a time of turmoil and death?