Growing up on the thriving plantation called The Meadows, Lillian Booth
cherishes the brightest, happiest dreams...
Lillian's world is full of grand parties, of sunshine and promises, as
thrilling as the fairy tales Mama spins for her and her little sister,
Eugenia. No one, not even her cold, stern Papa and her Bible spouting
sister Emily, can crush her spirits-- until the day Emily reveals the
shattering secret at Lillian's birth, a secret Mama sadly cannot deny.
Still Lillian refuses to believe Emily's hateful claim that she is evil,
a curse... even when sweet, gentle Eugenia loses her fragile hold on
life, and Mama retreats further into her fantasies. But when tragedy
befalls her best friend, the one boy whose tender heart mirrors her own,
Lillian comes to believe Emily's grim words. Meekly, she endures her
penance, finding a strange solace in the endless repetition of prayers
in a room stripped of all comforts. Lillian's heart is torn anew when,
in a drunken haze, Papa subjects her to the most brutal degradation.
Then Papa loses The Meadows in a card game, and Lillian is faced with a
new and terrifying prospect. Arrogant, handsome playboy Bill Cutler will
return the plantation-- if Lillian will marry him! Now Lillian must
leave her girlhood home behind, and make a bold new beginning as the
mistress of a hotel called Cutler's Cove...
