Serena was sure Brant Parnell wanted to marry her for her father's money, but it didn't matter. An elopement with the handsome sea captain would get her to Massachusetts where she could realize her most cherished dream -- to be a newspaper journalist. Love was no part of her dream, and a rejected Brant returned to sea, never suspecting he had sparked a smoldering fire in his reluctant bride.

But when scandal cost Serena her job, she fled to her sister's home in North Carolina and started her own newspaper. As the Civil War raged, she saw the horrors and knew the indignity and danger of being a Yankee woman in enemy land.

Yet her greatest anguish was her longing for a love denied. Each night was tormented by blazing images of the man who possessed her soul and enflamed the passions of her heart -- and showed her what it meant to be a woman. And only in the ecstasy of love's glorious surrender would she know at least the splendor of her most impossible dream.