The year is 1861. The place, New Orleans. For Lydia Lazarus, a privileged White girl nearly 15 years old, life is carefree and perfect with no sign things might ever change. But President Lincoln has just delivered his first inaugural address, rumblings over the future of slavery soon spark an attack on Fort Sumter, and the Civil War has begun. Her mother and father being kind to their one family of slaves, namely Pricilla and William Brown and their daughter Savannah, and seeing nothing wrong with the practice, Lydia is inconsolable when she overhears a conversation in which the Browns express the hope the South will lose the war and they will soon be free. Considering Savannah her closest and dearest friend, a sister, Lydia is at first devastated by what she feels is an unforgivable betrayal of their relationship; however, with the urging of her older brother, Joshua?who, unbeknown to Lydia at the time, has already turned against slavery?and her slaves, she is taken on an eye-opening, tear-filled journey into the unspeakably cruel underbelly of her once perfect, carefree world. She will be forever changed by it.

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