Sautee Shadows: Book One of the Georgia Gold Series

By Denise Weimer

Description:

Sautee Shadows: Book One of the Georgia Gold Series is the sweeping saga of four families whose lives intertwine through romance, adventure and murder, linking antebellum Georgia's coast and mountains during the mid-1800s. Journey back to a time when the foothills of Northeast Georgia were scarcely more than a frontier, a summer retreat for the state's wealthy coastal elite, verdant watercolor vistas where the footprint of the Cherokee remained. Where one half-Cherokee, orphaned girl grows up in the shadow of a mystery. Who killed her father, and what happened to the gold he mined from the Sautee Valley? And with whom does she belong, the adoptive farm family who raised her, or her white inn-keeper grandmother? Forced from the only life she's ever known and molded into her grandmother's idea of a proper young lady, Mahala Franklin finds life in Clarkesville lonely and full of challenges. But there are at least pieces of the puzzle of her past to be fit together, and relationships that will shape her future ... with Clay Fraser, her Cherokee friend who wants to be so much more, with wealthy entrepreneur and competitor Jack Randall, with whom Mahala doesn't dare to dream of more, and with Carolyn Calhoun, unwilling socialite caught between her feelings for two very different brothers.As the lives of the coastal "summer people" mingle with those of Habersham's natives, a tapestry of love, friendship and intrigue unfolds, a tapestry laced with a brilliant thread that will lure you through all four books of The Georgia Gold Series.

Why the author wrote this book:

Having grown up visiting the historic sites of Northeast Georgia, I wanted to write a series that captured the time from the Gold Rush and Cherokee Removal through Reconstruction. The family of historical print artist and my historical mentor, John Kollock, like many in the 1800s, owned homes both on the coast and in the mountains ... to escape yellow fever. Readers follow four fictional families of different backgrounds through the real events and places of the mid-1800s, providing a well-rounded perspective on the history and a lot of action and romance.