Kathleen Grissom Boeken

The New York Times bestselling author of The Kitchen House and Glory Over Everything presents a sweeping saga inspired by the true story of Crow Mary, an indigenous woman navigating two worlds in 19th-century North America. In 1872, sixteen-year-old Goes First, a Crow Native woman, marries white fur trader Abe Farwell, who renames her Mary. They embark on a journey to his trading post in Saskatchewan, where she befriends a Métis woman named Jeannie and makes an enemy of a wolfer named Stiller. Despite discovering a dark secret about Farwell, Mary falls in love with him. Their peaceful winter trading season is shattered when a group of drunken whiskey traders slaughters forty Nakota, and Mary witnesses the murderers, including Stiller, abduct five Nakota women. When Farwell refuses to intervene, Mary takes matters into her own hands, arming herself and rescuing the women from the fort, igniting a clash of cultures that tests her marriage and the love between her and Farwell. This narrative spans decades and explores the beauty of the upper West and Canada while delving into the complexities of marriage and one woman's heart.

When a white servant girl violates the order of plantation society, she unleashes a tragedy that exposes the worst and best in the people she has come to call her family. Orphaned while onboard ship from Ireland, seven-year-old Lavinia arrives on the steps of a tobacco plantation where she is to live and work with the slaves of the kitchen house. Under the care of Belle, the master's illegitimate daughter, Lavinia becomes deeply bonded to her adopted family, though she is set apart from them by her white skin. Eventually, Lavinia is accepted into the world of the big house, where the master is absent and the mistress battles opium addiction. Lavinia finds herself perilously straddling two very different worlds. When she is forced to make a choice, loyalties are brought into question, dangerous truths are laid bare, and lives are put at risk.