Bøker av Gretchen Craig

The second novel in the Old Louisiana Plantation Series featuring Cajuns, Creoles, and those who toiled among them as slaves. On the eve of Civil War, the daughter of Southern planters finds her loyalties tested in a magnificent saga of family pride and forbidden love. Brought up amid the luxury of plantation life, Marianne Johnston never questions her sheltered life until, driven by her conscience, she joins the Underground Railroad. Soon Marianne is living a dangerous double life, helping slaves flee by night and acting the belle by day. And nothing is riskier than her attraction to wild, heartless young Southerner Yves Chamard. Yves risks himself as a firebrand abolitionist in old Louisiana, convinced the soft-handed Miss Johnston is just another pretty, complacent belle. Together they risk reputation, fortune, and their own freedom to free every slave they can before they're caught. Large Print Edition

With meticulous attention to historical detail, Crimson Sky brings to life the clash of two great civilizations. In 1598 when the Spanish come into the land, the Puebloans fight for their faith and their culture, and in the end, for their lives. Zia's world has been shattered by her husband's loss, by murderous marauders, and by drought. To save her child from starvation, she accepts the protection of a Spanish conquistador, but is the love and security he provides worth abandoning the sacred gods and even her identity as a woman of the pueblo? Diego Ortiz yearns for a home and a family in this strange new land. When he meets a beautiful woman of the pueblos, he offers her not only protection for her child and herself, but also his everlasting love. Ashka, left for dead after an ambush in the forest, challenges death itself to achieve his two heart's desires, returning to Zia, and exacting revenge against his greatest enemy, the Spaniard Diego Ortiz.

Since they were children running barefoot about Toulouse Plantation, Josie and Cleo have been as close as sisters, forging an unbreakable bond that defies their roles as mistress and slave. Together, the two have shared secrets and protected each other through happiness and heartbreak. They never dream they could also share an intense passion for the same man, the elegant, charming, and irresistibly seductive Bertrand Chamard. His love will change their friendship forever and set in motion a series of events from which there can be no turning back. Set among the bayous of Old Louisiana and the grand avenues of New Orleans, Always & Forever is the stirring saga of a Creole family and of two women, bound by blood and friendship, who are tested by prejudice, betrayal, and the tragedies of slavery. Book I of The Plantation Series.Includes Book Group discussion questions.

"She's waking up." Catherine opened her eyes to see three ragged women hovering over her. "Take some water," one of them said. Catherine shoved the cup aside, afraid she'd be sick. The floor rocked. The air smelled of the sea. She clambered to her feet, staggering, and fought the panic threatening to overwhelm her. He'd put her aboard a ship. Unlike the other women aboard ship, Catherine de Villeroy had assumed Fate intended her to live an aristocratic life of ease and luxury. Instead she is transported to a fetid jungle to be tied to a secretive stranger who reeks of pigs. Catherine's shipmate Marie Claude has had few expectations in life, and even they have been disappointed. When her only options become prostitution or starvation, Fate decrees she will become the wife of a stranger in a strange land. Even if her new husband is a cruel man, how can life not be better in this rough paradise of alligators and wild orchids? Agnes expected a life spent in her father's bookstore, perhaps married to a gentle, scholarly man. Betrayed and ruined, Agnes retreats into herself and hardly notices when she is transported to Louisiana. Married to a stranger who desires only an amenable bed partner, Agnes strives to stay present in her new life and to explore what more Fate allows a ruined woman.

In 1720, the French King heeded his Louisiana settlers' pleas for women. In Book I, Here Will I Remain, the first voyage of the New Hope carried women gathered from the prisons and asylums of Paris. In Book II, What We May Be, the brides-to-be grew up in convents and orphanages. Whatever their lives in France, however, the wilderness demands all of their courage and hope to build new lives in a new world. Giles Travert needs to find a wife among the young women fresh off the boat from France. He asks, he's rejected, and he asks yet another, but the women see his three little children trailing behind him and turn their smiles elsewhere. The only woman who really enjoys his children, and perhaps even him, is not available. Ever. Sister Joelle's heart's desire is to take her final vows to become a professed nun. Meanwhile, her mission is to shepherd the young women who have come to wed French settlers. After a sheltered life in the convent, she finds Louisiana challenges her, excites her, and baffles her. What is she really meant to do in this New World? The women from the earlier voyage of the New Hope are now wives facing even greater challenges than finding a husband. Marie Claude, already widowed, desperately wants a baby. Catherine, the daughter of an aristocrat, is deeply in love and happy with the poor farmer she married, until a letter arrives from France calling her home to her life of luxury and ease. In the exotic wilderness of Louisiana, new and old arrivals search for the age-old goals of love, honor, and happiness.