Henry Carter Hull

When the dead body of a young woman is found on the grounds of Belle Vie, the estate's manager, Caren Gray, launches her own investigation into Belle Vie's history, which leads her to a centuries old mystery involving the plantation's slave quarters--and her own past.

'How the Word is Passed' is Clint Smith's revealing, contemporary portrait of America as a slave owning nation. Beginning in his own hometown of New Orleans, Smith leads the reader through an unforgettable tour of monuments and landmarks - those that are honest about the past and those that are not - that offer an intergenerational story of how slavery has been central in shaping our nations collective history, and ourselves.

"Even as a young girl in nineteenth-century Spain, Ana Cubillas is drawn to the exotic island of Puerto Rico by the diaries of an ancestor who traveled there with Ponce de Leon. And in twin brothers Ramon and Inocente, both in love with Ana, she finds a way to get there: she marries Ramon and convinces the brothers that their destiny is in the remote sugar plantation they have inherited on the island. But Ana's fantasies haven't prepared her for the...