Magnolia Tree [Paperback]

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.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Letty Banks is not your typical southern belle. Instead of living a life of luxury, she devotes herself to protecting her mulatto half-sister and her niece from her monstrous father. She never leaves the plantation, receives only two visitors in many years, and finally takes the daring and morally ambiguous step of killing her father at the height of the Civil War, then fleeing with her niece and a slave. They travel to her father's hunting lodge further south, deep in the woods of Georgia, and assume new identities. Letty is accepted into the rural community because of her medicinal skills but almost jeopardizes her position by helping Thorne, a Union balloonist, escape. Although he forgets her, they are destined to be reunited. What sets this historical romance apart is Letty's character: she is reminiscent of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind, although her determination and grit are aimed at saving loved ones rather than land. Patty Engelmann

Lovely Letty Banks was tied to her home by a cruel father, who threatened to harm Letty's little half-sister, unless Letty stayed on the estate. Letty would give up anything, even the love of handsome Yankee Thorn Bradley, to keep her sister safe. Then her father died, and this beautiful woman was in danger--from a nation on the brink of civil war, and from men determined to take her rightful inheritance. Letty wouldn't go down without a battle, but she seemed no match for the deadly tension sweeping the land. Unless a love stronger than any hate returned to save her, and show her passion's true meaning...