Dulce exilio

In 1862, Kate Summerbee reaches her seventeenth birthday aboard the only home she has ever known, a vagabond, ramshackle Mississippi stern-wheeler on the New Orleans levee.. .Six months later, Kate's wistful longings for a proper home and family are cruelly interrupted by the guns of the Civil War. Escaping with no more than her courageand the money in her purse, her destiny leads her to England and a world undreamed of among the river wharves of her childhood.Then in the beautiful English countryside she becomes caught up in the struggle between two men, Matthew Oliver and his father, Adam - each hard to like but fatallyeasy to love - locked in bitter rivalry for her affection.But only Kate, impulsive, generous and all too human when it comes to matters of the heart can determine the future of her love, and the home where she can finally belong.