The chains of love held her fast to the Master of Rosewood

She was Amelia Woodhull, Boston beauty, fervent abolitionist, yet in the arms of Pierce Tarleton, gambler, adventurer and owner of hundreds of slaves, she was only a young girl hopelessly enraptured.

A whirlwind courtship flung her into marriage with the plantation owner and the unsettling reality of Southern life - the white-pillared mansions and rotting slave hovels, the hard cruelty underlying the soft-spoken charm of Southern gentlemen. It was a life to test her courage and her love. For her husband now seemed a man she hardly knew, a man with other women, other goals, other lives. Was the Master of Rosewood the unfaithful scoundrel he appeared to be? What had become of the hero of Amelia's dreams?