Bayou — Pamela Jekel

OLIVA -- a headstrong Cajun beauty, she defied tradition to marry the man she loved, then seduced him back to her own beloved bayou;

CELISMA -- the hauntingly lovely, fiercely loyal mulatto slave who tended the aging Oliva, then warmed the bed ... and the heart .. of Oliva's planter son, Samuel;

MANON -- Celisma's fiery daughter. She was the first to forsake the bayou culture for the heady night life of New Orleans, and she was destined to love the one man who could never truly be hers;

ZOE -- convent bred and forced to marry a rich planter, she watched her mother rise to the heights of Creole society, then chose a very different kind of happiness for herself.

From the backwater bayou to the high life of New Orleans and the elegance of Mississippi River plantations, BAYOU is cotton and the War of 1812, sugar cane and the War Between the States, moonshine and World War I. But above all, it is the story of four remarkable women whose passions drove them to forge a way of life that will never be seen again.