Rose Thorn

In an act of kindness (and to alleviate guilt over her family's role in slavery) Amanda Roberts became the benefactor of Promise Land, a school and orphanage for black children. Not afraid to confront Klansmen who fight against the school, and engaged to a local plantation owner, she finds herself falling in love with the school's administrator, a black man from the East, Noah Jackson. Faced with condemnation from the start, their steamy liaison is more than she'd bargained for. Why should she, a white heiress from a prominent Southern family, risk so much? That kind of love was too painful. And then there was Rita, the demented former slave of the Roberts, who pointed to Amanda and her sister Ginger and told them... "Don't tell master I told you but you are the blood of a slave."