From the hardships of frontier life to the glitter and opulence of plantation balls, from the earliest settlers on St. Catherine's Creek through the Civil War and the Great Flood of 1885, here is a vibrant story of joy and sorrow, hope, faith, and courage that are the very heart and soul of Natchez.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Spanning from 1729?and the early incursion of whites into the lower Mississippi River territory of the Natchez Indians?through 1885, this well-written, grandly imagined saga from the author of Deepwater moves across four generations of passionate, iron-willed women of the Old South. After losing his wife and children to illness and a boating mishap during their arduous sea and river voyage from Stonington, Conn., in 1775-76, Josiah Fleming arrives in Natchez too late to claim his 500 acres of prized land. Robbed of his hope of a new life, he picks up the pieces and ultimately weds Jane, the widowed sister of his neighbor. Their willful daughter, Anne, runs off with a riverboat gambler and turns her own six-year-old daughter, Arden, over to nuns. In turn, Arden grows up to marry and enjoy a romantic life as a plantation mistress until the Civil War turns her idyll into heartbreak. Her daughter, Felicity, widowed by the war, is left with two plantations to manage and the upbringing of her own daughter, LeeAnn, who gets caught between her grandmother and her mother as she struggles to find a life of her own. The decades of family melodrama come to a head in a heartstopping conclusion in which Felicity, having finally laid Arden to rest, must fight against social pressure to find new meaning in her life. With a Michener-like sweep and featuring a rich cast of characters (including several personified animals), this is an accomplished saga and a thoroughly enjoyable way to relive the history of a region and an era.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
When Josiah Fleming and his bride settle in Natchez, Louisiana, they carve an empire out of the southern soil and build a plantation house, Graced Ground, the setting for much of this epic romance. The story follows the lives of the descendants of Josiah Fleming, starting with his unruly, strong-willed daughter and ending four generations of strong-willed daughters later. Plantation hardships, the Civil War, misplaced romances, death, and longing (among other travails) combine to flesh out this absorbing but formulaic novel. Although Natchez has a hypnotic, movie-of-the-week quality that many readers will find attractive, the mysterious passages that appear occasionally describing the family lives of nearby woodland animals, complete with names, may prove distracting to some readers. Jekel, who has written of the South before in her novels Bayou and Deepwater, has done her research and provides a satisfying historical look at the time and the place; and in spite of the bizarre departures from the story line, cliched subplots, and convenient endings, she does a good job of drawing the reader into the yarn. Kathleen Hughes
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