*The violence of the Civil War* seemed remote from the lush and isolated Southern plantation that was beautiful Dorothy Wilkes' home. The shadows of human evil seemed totally alien to her sunlit world of gracious living and courtly love.

But Dorothy's dreamlike existence swiftly turned into a nightmare of doubt and fear when a handsome stranger bearing the family name of Phenwick led her along a path of forbidden desire and horrifying revelation.

What mysterious mission had brought this man here, and what secret motives had he for bending Dorothy to his iron will? Where did the strange visions that shimmered in Dorothy's mind come from, and what was the message from beyond the grave that she desperately struggled to decipher? Dorothy was a Phenwick woman now -- granted the uncanny powers of the female Phenwicks, and branded by their undying curse...