LONGLEAF

Even if set in the South -- Western Tennessee -- just after the Civil War, everything still glows and gleams in the ruins of what was, rosewood and mahogany, oleander and morning glories, as Bird Thatcher, at the death of the woman she believed to have been her mother, tries to fred out who she is and just what blood will tell. Her search, instigated by a quadroon, takes her to New Orleans to try and establish if one Musette Dutrone was her mother; black candles burn again in the Rue Soir along with amulets and spells, evil or ""wickedness beyond sanity"" hangs heavy, a preacher is murdered, and the young man she thought she loved who would return the ancestral Longleaf to her is lost forever. Very creamy cafe au lait, but lower your susceptibilities and you'll enjoy it.