The Ashes of Windrow — Juanita Tyree Osborne

Windrow, the towering colonnaded mansion high on the ridge above her own home, had always been forbidden territory to Phoebe Mallory; never in her twenty-two years had she set foot on its grounds, Shortly after the Civil War a carpetbagging Phelan had usurped most of the Mallory plantation to erect his stately home, and the two families had been feuding ever since.

As a child Phoebe had tried to make friends with her classmates, the Phelan twins, Tad and Clinnie, but to no avail. When Phoebe was seventeen, her own mother, the beautiful, emerald-eyed Kristine, had run off with the darkly handsome Nicholas Phelan, father of the twins. Phoebe's father, Otis, always a taciturn man, became more withdrawn and embittered; he absolutely forbade her to see her mother. Phoebe, disconsolate at being abandoned by her beloved mother, hears of her only through Leon Stoddard, her father's faithful tenant farmer, and his wife, Opal.

And then there is a fire at Windrow. The lovely mansion is reduced to ashes, and Nicholas Phelan loses his life in the blaze. A series of tragic and threatening events beings when Otis Mallory is accused of starting the fire. Phoebe finds an unexpected ally in Torrance Phelan, Nicholas's younger, but no so handsome, brother.

Though an evil spirit seems to hover over the ruins of Windrow and all those associated with it, Phoebe finally realizes that the true evil is a devilishly clever fiend--someone she knows, but who?--that wants her dead.