THE LACED CHAMELEON - Second Edition

New Orleans native Mademoiselle Francesca Dumas is a kept woman. At age eighteen in the second year of the American Civil War, she is the concubine of a rich New Orleans banker, Joachim Buisson. Born a quadroon, Francesca leads a sheltered life of elegant jewels, gowns, lace, and lavish balls-until a bullet shatters her dream world.

An assassin murders "her man" as Francesca stood beside him among a throng gathered atop a Mississippi River levee on April 25, 1862. Bowed by Joachim's body, ra...