Refiner's Fire

Lizzie Hamilton, the pampered daughter of a prominent nineteenth-century South Carolina cotton planter, has lost everything—her home, her social status, her financial security. Spurned by the Charleston society she once dominated and dependent on the largesse of her extended family, she is an easy mark for handsome professional gambler Jack O’Rourke, who convinces her to run away with him to New Orleans, the possibility of marriage held out as an enticement.

She soon realizes she has been du...