Corrie May Upjohn stands on the levee, watching men unload the riverboats and wishing she could travel far away. A poor preacher’s daughter, she is only fourteen, and her life is already laid out for her: marriage in a year or two, and then decades of drudgery.

At nearby Ardeith Plantation, Ann Sheramy Larne lives in luxury, but feels just as imprisoned as Corrie May. Their lives could not be more different, but when the horrors of war and Reconstruction come to Louisiana and the Old South begins to fall, these two women will band together to survive.