Rendezvous at Live Oaks — Elsie W. Strother

Jenna Townsend understood the gravity of a deathbed promise, but she was not sure how to fulfill the one she had made to her father. She had assured him that she would travel in his stead to Live Oaks, the South Carolina rice plantation owned by his half brother, Terence Merriman. Uncle Terry had written a distressed letter to Jenna's father, stating that he was in danger and afraid that "they" would get "it." Jenna had promised to "help" him.

Before she had time to formulate a plan, Jenna, arriving incognito from New York, found herself forced to take refuge at Live Oaks from a driving rainstorm. Built on thick stilts, the plantation house remained safe and dry during the storms that periodically flooded the low country around Charleston.

Although she liked her hostess, Aunt Percy Merriman, Jenna was aghast to learn that Uncle Terry's wife had been recently widowed. Strange, too, was the fact that neither Aunt Percy nor her children by a former marriage, consumptive Lavinia and gross, feeble-minded Clyde, seemed to be mourning the head of the household.

Stranded with Jenna at Live Oaks were Aunt Percy's coarse, pugnacious brother, Caleb Powers, his slovenly wife, Mattie, and two of the most exciting bachelors Jenna had ever encountered. Perhaps Uncle Terence's lawyer, levelheaded Russell Durrand, or Kenneth Sassoon, whose Southern gallantry was unflagging, could help her make sense of the sinister undercurrents swirling about Live Oaks--if she could decide which one to trust.