During the American Civil War the paths of three women intersect. There are: Georgeanna “Georgy” Woolsey, a Union nurse and ancestor of Caroline Ferriday profiled in this author’s previous work, Lilac Girls; Jemma, a slave on the Peeler Plantation in Maryland, a border state not impacted by the Emancipation Proclamation; and Anne-May, the owner of Peeler Plantation whose husband and brother are fighting on opposite sides in the war. It’s hard to imagine how the paths of all three of these women might cross, but in telling their stories the author takes the reader from the refined drawing rooms of Ney York City and the White House, to the horrors of battlefield hospitals and the brutal treatment of slaves, and tells the story of women willing to forge their own paths – good or bad – regardless of social conventions.