Includes a book club guide with discussion questions.
Summary:
Conducting research for her weekly column, Jinx, a free-spirited Muscogee (Creek) historian, travels to Hold House, a Georgia plantation originally owed by Cherokee chief James Hold, to uncover the mystery of what happened to a tribal member who stayed behind after Indian removal, when Native Americans were forcibly displaced from their ancestral homelands in the nineteenth century. At Hold House, she meets Ruth, a magazine writer on assignment, and Cheyenne, a Southern Black debutante seeking to purchase the estate. Hovering above them all is the spirit of Mary Ann Battis, the young Indigenous woman who remained in Georgia more than a century earlier. When they discover a diary left on the property that reveals even more about the house's dark history, the three women's connection to the place grow deeper. Over a long holiday weekend, Cheyenne is forced to reconsider the property's rightful ownership, Jinx re-examines assumptions about her tribe's racial history, and Ruth confronts her own family's past traumas before surprising herself by falling into a new romance.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.