Palmettos & Mimosas — Ann Williams

Fate introduced them when Vaughn purchased Bessie, to be his sisters' birthday baby doll. Neither the planters' son nor the slave child that crawled from the cage and clung bravely to him could have known their love was preordained. Bessie was an outsider as she grew up in the Highwater mansion. She became an outcast amongst the slaves, once banished to the quarters. Vaughn inherits the Highwater Plantations along with a family legacy of leadership. He realizes at this time that his love for Bessie will alter all that he imagined his future to be. They struggle against their own prejudices, imbedded into them, by the lifestyles they were born into. Over the course of two decades through rape, war, power struggles, and the great racial divide, this couple fights to find their way.