When Caroline Wimbley Levine returned to Tall Pines Plantation, she never expected to make peace with long-buried truths about herself and her family.

America's first lady of storytelling takes up where her best-selling Bright Captivity left off, recreating life on a nineteenth-century plantation in the vivid, dramatic second volume of The Georgia Trilogy.

"Sara! You must come out! You're wanted downstairs right away," Lucie hissed through the keyhole on the locked bedroom door. "Stepmama is furious and Father has sent word that he's coming home early from the Exchange. She says he's in a rage over what you've done!" "I haven't done anything! It's not my fault if those two hotheads decide to fight a duel!" came her sister's indignant voice from the other side of the door. "Oh, Sara, please!" Lucie pleaded....

Blythe gazed into his eyes. It seemed as if she were looking into his very soul. Could she read genuine repentance there . . . or just regret that he had brought shame to himself, disgraced his family? Suddenly, she knew. This was the real Malcolm -- before the War, before Rose died, before his life became a wasteland. She saw the Malcolm who remained uncorrupted -- gentle, intelligent, gallant before tragedy and loss took their bitter toll. Could...

Even while Randall was speaking, it was Pietro I saw, the tenderness in his dark eyes looking at me, the caress in his soft voice. In Randall's voice there was not a shred of emotion; nor was there any in his expression. How should I respond? What should I say? I knew this was the hardest decision I would ever have to make. Either choice would demand a different price. Was I prepared to pay it? Was love enough in the one to bridge all the other differences...

For Rod it was a moment out of a thousand dreams. Yet the reality was more than he could have imagined. "Blythe!" He said her name and in his voice was all the hope he'd thought was lost. The woman he saw was even lovelier than the girl he remembered. She was still as beautiful -- tall, slender, the glorious auburn hair, the soft, vulnerable mouth and peachbloom skin -- as when he had first met her at Montclair. At sixteen, Blythe had been shy, eager...

Something seems different at Tall Pines Plantation for Caroline Wimbley Levine. It lies somewhere in the distance between her and her mother--and in the understanding of what it means to come home.

Tells the story of Solomon Northup, a free black man who was abducted in Washington, D.C., and forced to spend the next twelve years of his life in captivity as a slave on a Louisiana cotton plantation.