miss Lou

In post-Civil War Virginia, a young woman named Lou finds herself imprisoned by expectations she never chose. Her guardian uncle has arranged her marriage to her cousin Mad Whately, a man who represents everything confining in her world. When she speaks to Aun' Jinkey, her trusted confidante, Lou's frustration spills out, not just against this unwanted betrothal but against the smaller prisons of thought and ambition that Southern society imposes on women. Then everything shifts. A Union soldier named Allan Scoville stumbles onto the estate, wounded and desperate. Lou must hide him, tend his wounds, confront the enemy her world has taught her to hate, and in doing so, begins to question everything: her loyalties, her desires, her very sense of self. This is a novel about one woman's awakening at the crossroads of a nation's grief.