This bodice ripper is set in New Orleans during the reconstruction period after the Civil War. Valinda Lacy has come south to teach the newly emancipated freedmen and their children. But just as she is making headway her school is destroyed by thugs. As she runs for her life, she meets Captain Drake LeVeq, one of the sons of a wealthy Black family who made their money some generations back by piracy. Drake, however, is an architect and builder, intent on helping the freedmen survive and thrive.

It's a typical romance with heaving bosoms, knees made weak by kisses, demure women and strong men who are talented and generous lovers. Valinda and Drake make a nice couple, and his family (mother and three brothers) fills out the cast of characters quite well. Jenkins added some interesting tidbits of information regarding this period in American history.

The action is fast, even if the plot is fairly predictable. This novel even includes a minor subplot involving two gay men. ( )

Valinda Lacy's mission in the steamy heart of New Orleans is to help the newly emancipated community survive and flourish. But soon she discovers that here, freedom can also mean danger. When thugs destroy the school she has set up and then target her, Valinda runs for her life-and straight into the arms of Captain Drake LeVeq.

Since residing in the south, I learned that kitchens were not part of the main residence of a home, but a separate building perhaps connected by a breezeway. This was an unknown fact for me.

A ragtag supremacist group called Protectors of the South made up of illiterate poor White men, determined to turn back time, and terrorizes Drake Le Veq. I was so moved by the forty plus men, mounted and on foot, who put themselves in danger to protect and aid the Le Veq’s in the stance against Supremacists.

The novel touches on several subjects, such as miscegenation (the interbreeding of people considered to be of different racial types), Freedmen’s Bureau, Black Civil War veterans, familiar issues, and passing.

The Le Veq Family is introduced in previous novels by Jenkins in Through the Storm (the first book in the Le Veq Family series), Winds of the Storm (the second boon in the series), and Captured (the third book in the series). Again, Beverly Jenkins keeps me captivated, entertained and learning. The next read in the Women Who Dare series is Wild Rain. ( )

Really, for me this is not so much popular romance as popular adventure, like a murder mystery with a strong romantic current to it. Obviously romance is usually one of the plots to an adventure novel, really most novels; a straight plain Jane romance can be a little confining, you know: “love, and tell no one”. I don’t know. There are different kinds of pop lit.

As nice as it is to have different times in history represented, I don’t think that historicity alone makes a genre, you know; books about the past can be either romance or adventure, or one of the (moderately or ‘high’) literary types. I suppose it can differentiate sub-genres.

But yeah, guns (although not shooting), in the first chapter, not so much like a Regency or Amish romance, more like, Who killed Auntie Plum, Rover? You know. I don’t know. I mean, I guess it makes sense. I picked up this book at Barnes & Noble (storefront), so I guess it had to appeal at least marginally to the white buyer of books, and a real naughty Black romance without a sense of history/adventure/non-romance might not have flown as well. I guess you can get past the mental checkpoint a little easier with cultural encounters than purely sexual ones. Really, most Black people can’t afford to be “black” like that, you know; they can’t get away with it. It’s people’s image of them, and I guess there are weird images of white people in media too, but most white people are only too happy to let you know that they’re not actually rich (even if they listen to wealthy Top40 singers and watch mega-million blockbuster movies, and, I don’t know, don’t like poor people too much), but Black people are kinda stuck with their image, you know. After all, they have black skin.

So there’s that…. It leaves a mark, you know.

…. It handles issues like slavery much better than most white writing, which tends to be timid and conservative in a way at best, and crypto-anti-Black somewhat commonly, and almost always basically just by and for white people, shunting Blacks aside to one degree or another. We like to talk about credentials and scholarship; at least, some of us do, but the other requirement to giving people a fair deal is to give a fuck about them, you know. “And I don’t know about you, and that’s okay, because I don’t wanna.”

…. It’s a pirate book for adults, lol.

Aside from living the characters and the romance between Val and Drake, I love seeing a slice of what post-slavery life in New Orleans was like. I cried multiple times but how just a simple act of learning to read, inspired sacrifice in some and hatred in another. ( )

When Valinda Lacey originally went to New Orleans it was to wait for her fiancé to return to her so they could marry. She didn't reckon on falling in love with New Orleans, despite the racist idiots and the heat, and being captivated by Captain Drake LeVeq and his family. They embrace her and show her how life might be lived and she's not sure that she wants to go back to her former life. Drake wants the best for her but they're not quite sure how to achieve it.
I really enjoyed this story and the characters involved and want to read more by Beverly Jenkins after this ( )