The master storyteller and best-selling author of Evergreen, Random Winds, and Eden Burning has now written a novel that captures the fabulous world that was New Orleans in the mid-nineteenth century.

It is Belva Plain's singular ability to paint a canvas of great scope from the perspective of one riveting personal story. Her portrait here of a Jewish woman's struggle- in the midst of the cataclysmic Civil War- to reconcile her duties as a Southern wife and mother with her passion for a forbidden man- and a forbidden cause- is unforgettable.

Nothing in Miriam Raphael's life has prepared her to cope with the terrors of her present situation. Brought by her doting father from their ghetto in Germany to this beautiful city, this "jewel in the river's crescent," Miriam has been raised in the lap of idle luxury. The Raphael household is full od nothing but the finest treasures from Europe. The family associates with the crème de la crème of New Orleans society. So marriage to Eugene Mendes- one of the city's rising stars- seems the perfect end to her charmed girlhood.

But Miriam's brother, David, banished from the family home for his outspoken sympathies with the North, and their childhood friend Gabriel Carvalho, who has adored Miriam since she was a little girl, both sense that all is not right in the Mendes household. And their suspicions are correct. For indeed Miriam, a proper matron and mother of twins, cannot bear her husband's slightest touch. Or admit that she has worldly opinions and ambitions of her own.

It is André Perrin, Miriam's handsome and gallant lover, who opens up for her the world of true romance. But it is the undying devotion of both Gabriel that enables her to find new strength as she becomes engulfed in the tragic wave of war.