BOOKS II | aljonesauthor

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The Albigensian Crusade raged through southern France during the thirteenth century. A brutal religious war masked the true battle, a political and social struggle to preserve a way of life. The defeated risked burning at the stake. When it ended, the Kingdom of France reached to the Pyrenees.

Alberensa

“Do you believe in miracles, Giles”? That is the question that Agnes, Countess of Alberensa, puts to her husband in the Spring of 1231. Her capital city in Languedoc is besieged by the French, led by King Louis IX and his mother Blanche of Castile, the most formidable woman of her age. It is time for a miracle, certainly, but the young Agnes has her doubts. If God provided miracles on the whims of men, she would once again be able to walk and to see. It would be far better, Agnes decides, to pray for the Lord’s blessing on a miracle that she shapes herself.

SAXONY AND PRUSSIA

The once-vaunted Prussian Army suffers a devastating defeat during the War of the Fourth Coalition. At the end, only a single corps remained to protect what was left of the country from Napoleon's huge French army.

Dresden Nights

Lieutenant Manfred "Red" von Rössel performs heroically as the Prussian Army is defeated by Napoleon at the Battle of Jena. Impressed by his bravery, the Emperor of the French grants him safe conduct back to Prussia rather than taking him prisoner. While passing through Dresden on his way home, Red becomes ill from his wounds. He collapses in the doorway of Frau Anna Winkler's porcelain shop.

SOUTH CAROLINA

Late in the seventeenth century, British adventurers and French Huguenot refugees from religious persecution established the Province of South Carolina. One hundred years later, the Port of Charles Town exported prodigious quantities of rice, produced by enslaved African labor on the plantations in the surrounding Lowcountry. In the Carolina Backcountry further inland, settlers who had come down the Great Wagon Road from Pennsylvania and Virginia pushed west against the Cherokee Towns in the Appalachian Mountains. Tension between the colonists and Britain grew steadily after 1765. In 1775, rebellion broke out.

The Maye Heiress

In 1775, Allafair Priscilla Wilford, a sixth-generation descendant of French Protestant first settlers, prepares for her future as the sole owner of her family’s vast properties in South Carolina. As a single woman, she may legally inherit and own her estates, but she has no right to participate in politics. She maneuvers between the Patriots and the Loyalists in the American Revolution, only to find herself betrayed by everyone around her. As the Revolution reaches its climax in the South, it appears that, despite her valiant and creative efforts, she will lose everything that still remains, including her own life.