"Set during Reconstruction-era New Orleans, this new work from the acclaimed author of Between Earth and Sky is a powerful story of human resilience--and of the unlikely bonds that hold fast even in our darkest moments. "The dead can't hurt you--only the living can." Effie Jones, a former slave who escaped to the Union side as a child, knows the truth of her words. Taken in by an army surgeon and his wife during the War, she learned to read and write, to tolerate the sight of blood and broken bodies--and to forget what is too painful to bear. Now a young freedwoman, she has returned south to New Orleans and earns her living as an embalmer, her steady hand and skillful incisions compensating for her white employer's shortcomings. Tall and serious, Effie keeps her distance from the other girls in her boarding house, holding tight to the satisfaction she finds in her work. But despite her reticence, two encounters--with a charismatic state legislator named Samson Greene, and a beautiful young Creole, Adeline--introduce her to new worlds of protests and activism, of soirées and social ambition. Effie decides to seek out the past she has blocked from her memory and try to trace her kin. As her hopes are tested by betrayal, and New Orleans grapples with violence and growing racial turmoil, Effie faces loss and heartache, but also a chance to finally find her place."--Front flap.

Effie Jones, a former slave, escaped to the Union side as a child. Taken in by an army surgeon and his wife, she learned to read and write, to tolerate the sight of blood and broken bodies, and to forget what is too painful to bear. Now a young freedwoman, she returns to New Orleans and earns her living as an embalmer, her steady hand and skillful incisions compensating for her white employer's shortcomings. Encounters with a charismatic state legislator named Samson Greene, and a beautiful young Creole, Adeline, introduce her to new worlds of protests and activism, of soirées and social ambition. As Effie seeks out her past she faces loss and heartache, but also a chance to finally find her place. -- adapted from front flap