Somerset

by Leila Meacham

Overview

A headstrong woman goes against her wealthy family’s wishes in this stunning prequel to Roses, perfect for fans of Gone with the Wind.

Born into the most influential family in 1830s South Carolina, Jessica Wyndham is expected to look appealing, act with decorum, and marry well. However, her abolitionist opinions and unflagging sense of justice clash with her slave-owning father. Jessica's testing of her powerful father's love is only the beginning of the pain, passion, and triumph she will experience on a journey with the son of a plantation owner and his best friend to a wild new land called Texas.

PRAISE FOR LEILA MEACHAM
"Discovering Leila Meacham and her spectacular talent is akin to discovering gold. With this novel she has become a national treasure." – Huffington Post

"Rich with American history and pitch-perfect storytelling, fans and new readers alike will find themselves absorbed in the family saga that Meacham has proven-once again-talented in telling." – Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781455547395
Publisher:	Grand Central Publishing
Publication date:	07/01/2014
Pages:	640
Sales rank:	364,651
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 8.00(h) x 1.75(d)

About the Author

Leila Meacham is a writer and former teacher who lives in San Antonio, Texas. She is the author of the bestselling novels Roses, Tumbleweeds, Somerset, and Titans. For more information, please visit LeilaMeacham.com.

Editorial Reviews

"Roses heralded as new Gone with the Wind."—USA Today (praise for Roses)

"As large, romantic, and American a tale as Texas itself."—Booklist (praise for Roses)

"An enthralling stunner....A compelling saga with echoes of Gone with the
Wind."—Publishers Weekly (praise for Roses)

"It's been almost 30 years since the heyday of giant epics...but Meacham's debut might bring them back. Readers who like an old-fashioned saga will devour this sprawling novel of passion and revenge."—Library Journal (praise for Roses)

From the Publisher

★ 09/16/2013
Bestselling author Meacham is back with a prequel to Roses that stands on its own as a sweeping historical saga, spanning the 19th century. This time Meacham delves into the backstory of the Tolivers and Warwicks before they settled in Howbutker, Tex. The son of a plantation owner in South Carolina, young Silas Toliver has big plans to join his best friend Jeremy Warwick on a wagon train to the new territory of Texas with his true love, Lettie. The only problem is that his father has died and left him with nothing, so he has no funds to pursue his dream—that is, until a neighboring plantation owner, Mr. Carson Wyndham, offers him an unorthodox deal: he’ll fund Toliver’s trip to Texas, and set him up with a plantation there, if Toliver will marry his daughter, Jessica Wyndham. Jessica helped free a slave and could cause scandal for the family if she stays in South Carolina. After much inner turmoil, Toliver agrees. And so begins a tangled love story, and a curse that follows the Toliver family through multiple generations. Rich with American history and pitch-perfect storytelling, fans and new readers alike will find themselves absorbed in the family saga that Meacham has proven—once again—talented in telling. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

"As large, romantic, and American a tale as Texas itself."

Booklist (praise for Roses)

"Roses heralded as new Gone with the Wind."

USA Today (praise for Roses)

Meacham introduced us to the Tolivers, Warwicks, and Dumonts in ROSES, her epic saga of the settling of East Texas. Now narrator Teresa DeBerry’s Southern accent helps set the time and place as listeners go back to 1835, filling in the families’ previous six decades. The story spans their emigration from South Carolina’s Plantation Alley to their settlement in the “black waxy” of the new territory of Texas, also covering the Civil War and the early twentieth century. DeBerry modulates her voice to identify characters from various stations of life. She smoothly navigates Meacham’s flowery language, full of similes, as she tries to breathe life into a sprawling cast of characters living in complex historical times. N.E.M. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine

APRIL 2014 - AudioFile

2013-09-15
Of teary eyes and torn crinoline: an appropriately big Texas saga by homegrown romance maven Meacham (Tumbleweeds, 2012, etc.). The sins of the fathers are visited upon the children. Or maybe the other way around, since this book covers the generations before the Warwicks and Tolivers donned Ralph Lauren, before their Dallas dust-ups in Roses (2010). Meacham's steamy prequel opens in Tidewater country, where young Jessica is pitching a wobbly because--well, because the pressure is on to do right by the paterfamilias and marry well onto some rich plantation, the ethical niceties of human bondage notwithstanding. Quoth she, in language befitting a coarser but more modern version of Gone with the Wind, "I'd rather copulate with a mule than a slave owner." It takes many pages before Miss Jessica bestirs herself for the westward movement and Manifest Destiny, for a vast landscape fussed and feuded over by stalwart Jeremy Warwick and Silas Toliver. Well, you can't settle a frontier or found an empire without breaking eggs, and Meacham's latest is littered with broken shells--most of them broken at just the right moment and not haphazardly, but always with the opportunity for bosoms to heave into view. Meacham writes skillfully, if never stretching the bounds of the historical romance genre; readers expecting a yarn of the Lonesome Dove school will find that they're in Barbara Cartland territory instead. (Miss Jessie, after all, belongs not to the local chapter of the Texas Rangers auxiliary but to a book club.) Still, Meacham writes competently, if without much flair, and her tale delivers what it sets out to do: Namely, it's a historical oater with oodles of emotion, rent hearts, sundered friendships and fierce Comanches. And does Ms. Jessie ever get around to bedding down with an anti-abolitionist? There's the question. Meacham's fans--and she has many--will be glad for this prequel.

Kirkus Reviews