The Forbidden Lily by Shelley Young

Enter the year 1824 in New Orléans when it’s considered the largest city in the Antebellum South. The flag of France had once waved high above the city’s Square, but now it is the American flag that has been lifted for all to see. In this city there dwells a Creole family by the name of Jennings, and the men in this family are known as the Devils in Nouvelle-Orléans. The family’s patriarch, Will, has never lived by anyone’s standards but those that have been in his family for many years. His most reputable plantation, Ashleywood, is known secretly amongst slaves near and far as ‘Slaab Heaben.’ And many slaves risk their lives to reach it rather than the North.

But that’s not what this story is all about. It’s about the wealthy family that resides in the Big House on the Ashleywood plantation that consists of men unafraid to pull the trigger on their enemy. It is about loyalty amongst those you learn to trust most, and the Creole Culture as it then existed, and the people of New Orleans trying desperately to hold onto that culture after Americains have arrived and try just as hard to change it. It’s about a broken family, and failed marriages, and extramarital affairs, and love, and what a father and two sons will go through to get it. It’s about protecting your children, and the people you love when the enemy looks just like you. And forgiveness, and how it can heal a past that many wouldn’t want to remember. And last but not least, it’s about a brothel madam who dabbles with tarot cards, for it is this woman who tells Pierre Jennings to find The Forbidden Lily.