Sarah Booth Delaney is both a Southern lady and a skilled detective, but her latest case takes her into the murky world of New Orleans where motives for murder, and a list of suspects, are numerous.

The story of Eliza Lucas Pinckney, who ran her father's plantation outside Charleston, South Carolina in the 1700s and struck a bargain with the plantation's slaves--teach her how to make indigo and she would teach them to read.