About This Book
The older brother’s new bride displaced his younger brother from their shared bedroom in Topsfield Massachusetts. The year was 1850, and the Civil War was still a decade away. Resentful about his loss, Nathan signed on for a whaling voyage and was gone for four years. When he returned, all he found was the burned out shell of a farmhouse and no family in sight. A letter in the post office informed him that he and his older brother, David, had inherited a cotton plantation, complete with one hundred slaves.
The transplanted New Englanders turned out to have markedly different reactions to slavery. The younger brother fell in love with a slave girl who had nursed him back to health after a horrific riding accident. The couple found out that the laws of South Carolina forbade any kind of a relationship between blacks and whites. They fled to New Hampshire. The older brother had become physically attracted to the young woman, and he sent his overseer North to recapture what he considered his property. The chase was on.
