Introducing my beautiful new novel: SARAH’S SECRET, a coming-of-age of a fourteen-year-old girl named Sarah, who will go on to become the real-life mistress of True Blue  Plantation in present-day Pawleys Island, until her death in 1823. 

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The novel is fiction, but it is based on my research and many years of living on the grounds of the former plantation. In  2004 I founded a non-profit to restore the Pawley Family Cemetery at True Blue. Today it is still quietly and meticulously cared for.

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Sarah Vaux was a remarkable woman who was at constant loggerheads with the conventions of the day. As a member of the aristocratic planter class, Sarah’s life was defined for her before she was born. But in subtle ways, she resisted; Sarah was a feminist before the invention of the word. You will be proud of Sarah and if you are anything like me, you will grow to love her. 

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The portrait on the book cover was reproduced from an oil on canvas painting of my granddaughter, Lily Hughes. Two summers ago Lily accompanied me to Latta Plantation where I volunteered as a docent. It wasn’t long before she was disenchanted with the plantation and wanted to go home.  

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I insisted on taking one photograph of her before we left. She was not happy, but I took it anyway. And I think that’s the magic of the portrait. Lily is not posing. The stare is real.