A name you know. A mood you’re in. Ten minutes to yourself. Start anywhere.
How the prose reads.
A plantation store clerk grows attached to a young woman whose family depends on the planter's credit.
After saving for months, two twelve-year-old twins walk into town to buy their first shoes.
A young man is pushed out of the only home he has known after his guardian dies.
A teenage mail carrier stops at a dance and finds that his horse and mailbag have vanished.
A traveler finds an old acquaintance trapped in an abusive marriage in a remote Louisiana cabin.
A planter's challenge to a segregated school sends its teacher to New Orleans, where their conflict follows her.
An enslaved young woman refuses the marriage her mistress has chosen and falls in love with another man.
Sent to work for a Louisiana family, a young Indigenous woman longs for the woods but grows attached to their baby.
At Easter, a carpenter notices a poor young woman whom the village has overlooked.
A lawyer urges a woman to divorce her absent husband and grows invested in her decision.
A wet and hungry prankster turns up at a lonely doctor's door during a storm.
A poor market worker supports an older woman from the family he once served.
On her way to Mass, a girl stays with an elderly neighbor whom no one else can tend.
After emancipation, Aunt Peggy asks for a quiet cabin where she can spend her final days.
A plantation worker sets out for a week of visiting and stops at a sick boy's cabin.
A young man pretends to be ill, leaving his godmother to handle work meant for him.
A woman who has never wanted children must care for a neighbor's four youngsters.
An older woman refuses to leave the house she was given when freed from slavery.
An elderly freed man keeps trying to reach the family that enslaved him decades earlier.
A little girl offers lilies to a furious neighbor after her calf damages his crops.
A traveler with a broken buggy is mistaken for a soldier who never came home for Christmas.
A ruined lawyer is offered cash for his inherited feud, forcing an old mountain honor code into a startling new bargain.
A fugitive from a Texas gunfight is offered a dangerous new identity in a distant coastal country.
A young man sends a street boy to plead his case to the woman who has forbidden him to write or speak to her.
