From Lissa, with Love — Catherine Muir

It is 1848. Two families, Jeffries and Bond, whose lives are deeply entwined in the soft old world beauty of the Shenandoah Valley, have suddenly come face to face with the death of one of their most precious members, Melissa Louise Jefferies Bond, beloved new mother of both families' first grandchild. Suddenly, not only is the young wife taken from them during the birth of her only child, but it quickly becomes more than just a suspicion that her husband, Richard Bond, may have brought about that death himself. Bit by bit, family and friends begin to piece together the ugly facts of both Lissa's death and Richard's life. Scattered across his dark past, the list of his victims now appears to include his baby sister, his cousin Jim Neyes' parents, his own parents, several deaths among the slave population of the Valley, and who knows what others there may have been that will never come to light. Lastly, and impossible to ignore with her ghost begging for attention, is Lissa. When love comes to Melinda and Jim Neyes, Richard's anger turns to rage against them both and he loses his carefully constructed cloak of seeming normalcy, exposing him to the Valley for the monster he always was and even his own family turns on him. When the legal rights to his vast fortune are stripped from him and transferred to his infant daughter and the child is then made the legal ward of Melinda and Jim Neyes, Richard's intent to reclaim his fortune becomes the worst nightmare the people of the Shenandoah Valley have ever had to face! Woven through the story of Lissa's time are many others. There is Mad'laine, the powerful, mysterious "Witchey Woman" of their childhood. In the end, it will be Mad'laine who bonds with the ghost of Lissa and calls up the forces of the after-world to bring Richard Bond to his rightful end! Not to be ignored, although he works hard at that, is Only One Ashton, a free black who is far more than what he seems. And if ever the Shenandoah Valley had a living rose, it was Annabel Mary Butler, but a rose with the wildest of thorns! Still, even heavy thorns can be worn down by true love, and that very remedy finally comes in the form of the handsome Major Charles Ellington, just returned from the Mexican campaign and as taken with the Rose of the Valley as she is with him. One by one, other players on this stage of intrigue take their places and join the attempt to capture Richard Bond, including Richmond's highly respected Judge Suddith, who only came to the Valley with his daughter to visit her intended, one of the young Bond cousins, but stayed on to gain the wild, bitter, Jamaican slave beauty, Lucinda, as his heart's partner for life. All the joys and sorrows of life in a gentle place gone suddenly insane come together to produce both needed change and a new future for the participants, even though that future will be far from the green and golden beauty of the Shenandoah Valley. Their future stretches west and leaves the past behind. But the ties that bind them to their beginnings are woven out of love and will always be there, reaching across the wide plains like ribbons of lovely memories tied around the gift of new life; a gift from Lissa, with love!