A fugitive charlatan schemes with a group of stranded slaves in antebellum Mississippi to build their own egalitarian plantation, colliding with the region’s dominant family, threatening to expose secrets that could prove fatal to them all.

SYNOPSIS:

This is not how they are remembered by history.

Driven by overwhelming longings, both outliers and establishment in this labyrinthine-plotted tale refuse to accept the roles society has forced upon them.

In 1859, DURKSEN HURST, a visionary charlatan on the run, encounters a dozen hungry slaves stranded in the Mississippi wilds. Led by the deceptively simple-looking BIG JOSH, together, they agree to build their own egalitarian plantation, with Hurst acting as figurehead“master” to hoodwink the town. But wise Big Josh fears that Hurst's grandiose schemes may doom them all to the hangman’s noose.

In the town, the reclusive widow, MARIE BRUSSARD FRENCH, manipulates the region’s bankers and cotton brokers, everyone...except her frail, rebellious heir-apparent, DEVEREAU. Driven by unbearable loneliness to mad acts, Devereau threatens to expose the family’s own tenuous façade—which would prove fatal to the Frenches.

Meanwhile, ANTOINETTE DUVALLIER, a beautiful, Cassandra-like fugitive from New Orleans with mysterious ties to the Frenches, is on her own desperate mission. Her arrival detonates long-repressed conflicts, unleashing a devastating upheaval of fire and blood that tears asunder the once-sleepy hamlet.

As the story’s tangled webs of deceit unravel, each startling plot twist and cathartic revelation shines a fresh light on what it means to be a man, a woman, free or enslaved—indeed, what it means to be human.

THE LIES THAT BIND

Available upon request.