Even before she had come in sight of the Sea Islands, Hester Snow knew that this new life might not present the haven and the opportunity she had sought. To be governess to the only son of an old Georgia plantation family, now that the was was over and hateful slavery banished - it had sounded entrancing to her, a lonely orphan in a bleak Northern setting. But her first encounters with the people of Seven Chimneys - the drunken Negroes at the boat landing, her employer's attractive and dashing half-brother who had ferried her over the water, the monstrous bel dame of a grandmother suffering stuffing herself with sweets in the faded drawing room, the almost-insolent but fascinating St. Clair LeGrand at his own dining table - these were portents of unrest. In the days that followed she was to know other disquieting things - the run-down gardens neglected by shiftless blacks, the futile young mistress of the house seeking escape in drink and finding death.

But now even these events could keep Hester Snow from working to the limit of her capacity for the good of Seven Chimneys, or could break the increasing hold its fascinating master had on her emotions. Only after she married him, and had seen his cruelty and duplicity in all its nakedness, did she fully realize the horror and depravity of that house, and the terrible danger that threatened her own life. how she faced this shocking revelation, how she battled against terror and doom with the weapons of ultimate desperation, how she found salvation and the fullness of true love in an unexpected place, makes a story that moves with breathless tension to a truly satisfying end.