Valerie Fraser Luesse

Peyton Cabot's 15th year will be a painful and transformative one. His father, the heroic but reluctant head of a moneyed Savannah family, has come home from WWII a troubled vet, drowning his demons in bourbon and distancing himself from his son. A tragic accident shows Peyton the depths of his...

When a black field hand disappears, a wealthy white boy he has befriended sets out to find him. But Pete McLean discovers more than he bargained for - including unexpected love and difficult truths about race and class in 1960s Alabama. There was another South in the 1960s, one far removed from...

With America's entrance into the Second World War, the town of Blackberry Springs, Alabama, has exploded virtually overnight. Workers from all over are coming south for jobs in Uncle Sam's munitions plants - and they're bringing their pasts with them, right into Dolly Chandler's grand but fading...