Growing up on the thriving plantation called The Meadows, Lillian Booth's world is full of grand parties and vibrant promise. No one, not even her cold, stern Papa and her Bible spouting sister Emily, can crush her spirits--until the day Emily reveals the shattering secret of Lillian's birth, a secret her mother sadly cannot deny.

Still Lillian refuses to believe Emily's hateful claim that she is cursed...but when tragedy befalls her best friend, the one boy whose tender heart mirrors her own, Lillian comes to believe her sister's grim words. Meekly, she endures her penance, finding a strange solace in the endless repetition of prayers in a room stripped of all comforts. But when Papa loses The Meadows in a card game, Lillian is faced with a new and terrifying prospect--arrogant, handsome playboy Bill Cutler will return the plantation...if Lillian will marry him. Now Lillian must leave her girlhood home behind and make a bold new beginning as the mistress of a hotel called Cutler's Cove.