Sautee Shadows

Friendship, competition, and unexpected love bring four families together, linking antebellum Georgia's mountains and coast in Sautee Shadows, Book One of the Georgia Gold Trilogy. Riding the wave of America's economic expansion during the 1830s, Richard Randall's family moves from New York to Savannah, Georgia, to establish a shipping firm. Richard's son Jack finds the southern city alien, his struggle to fit in only intensifying with the death of his mother. Eventually the Randalls follow the example of many other coastal elite - like the rice-planter Rousseaus, customers of Richard's - by building a summer home in Habersham County's foothills. Attracted by the possibility of future railroad tourism, Jack decides to purchase a hotel in Clarkesville, where he meets an unexpected competitor - young, lovely and spirited Mahala Franklin. Mahala helps her grandmother manage The Franklin Hotel, but relationships have never been easy for Mahala, either. Orphaned daughter of a man murdered for his gold and a Cherokee mother, Mahala was raised by a farm family in the Sautee Valley and torn from them by her paternal grandmother as a young teen. Mahala's life has been focused on unraveling the clues left to her in her father's strongbox and wondering if her father's murderer is still living in the same town! Separated by age and class boundaries, Mahala and Jack refuse to acknowledge their similarities and attraction. But Mahala is constantly brought into Jack's circles, initially by competition, but eventually also by virtue of her unexpected friendship with Carolyn Calhoun, a wealthy but shy and unwilling socialite. Carolyn's family exerts increasing pressure on her to overcome her awkward personality and choose a husband between two very different brothers: ridiculously handsome and self-assured Devereaux Rousseau, set to inherit his family's rice plantation and the upland farm in Habersham, and Dylan Rousseau, who follows the call to become a minister. When the Calhouns visit in Habersham, the lives of these families intertwine with friendship and unexpected romance. As the country hurtles toward division, Habersham's "summer people" must choose sides - and alliances that could sustain or destroy them in the coming decade.