Lucy Bondurant Chastain Venable is a beautiful woman of great passion and terrible need. Sheppard Gibbs Bondurant III--Lucy's cousin and lifelong confidant--is a man turned recluse by his own fatal feelings. Their mesmerizing story spans four decades--chronicling the astonishing love and hate between them and the turbulent transformation of their once-magnificent South.
King's OakAndy Calhoun flees her abusive doctor husband with her daughter. They seek refuge with Tish, her old college roommate. Tish is now married to a doctor in an old money and horse town called Pemberton. There is also a nuclear power plant called the Big Silver on the outskirts of town. Andy finds a job with the local community college and starts to fit in with Pemberton society. She mets up with Tom Dabney, however, one of the sons of King's Oak. Tom is an exuberant poet who worships and lives in the wilderness that surrounds Pemberton. Tom is everything that Andy does not need in her life right now. Despite warnings from her friends and "society" Andy soon becomes involved with Tom and his wilderness world, a world that Tom would do anything to protect. When Tom declares war on the enemy that is poisoning his woods, Andy must choose between her life with Tom and the woods, or the one she left behind..if Pemberton society will take her back.
