First published 2010
Mary Toliver controls the cotton empire that built her East Texas town. Percy Warwick runs the timber business that carved fortunes from the same soil. They should have married decades ago, but pride and circumstance pulled them apart. Now their separate choices ripple through their families like stones thrown in still water. Mary watches her descendants struggle with the weight of her decisions. Percy sees his children pay prices he never intended them to bear. The town that their families founded becomes a stage where love and ambition clash across a century. Secrets multiply in the shadows of cotton mills and lumber yards. Each generation inherits not just wealth and power, but the unfinished business of hearts that chose duty over desire. The Toliver and Warwick names carry prestige, but also the burden of what their founders sacrificed for success.
Genres: romance, american-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, 21st-century, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, unreliable-narrator
Setting: East Texas
Period: 20th-century, 21st-century
609 pages · Hardcover · Grand Central Publishing