The Waiting Time (Doubleday Colophon) Hardcover - 1997

From the publisher

A major new work from Eugenia Price, one of America's best-lovedstorytellers, The Waiting Time is an ambitious, romantic, historicallyrich epic, sure to delight new and loyal readers alike.
Spirited Abigail Banes dreams her newly married life in coastal Georgia will belived amid spreading magnolia trees, where lovers walk and whisper alongblossom-lined paths. But her dreams are shattered when a fatal accident claimsher husband, Eli, leaving her sole proprietor of their rice plantation--and theslaves that work the magnificent land.Forging a new life for herself, Abby finds a new identity--as a feminist beforeher time, an abolitionist before there is a way to free slaves. As shestruggles with her inheritance, Abby finds herself turning to her new overseer, Thaddeus Greene. And, at a time when love is forbidden to her, Abby realizesThad is destined to take Eli's place in her heart. Eli could never have knownthat by hiring Thad he had given a lasting gift to his beloved wife--for fromthe moment Abby gazes into Thad's penetrating gray eyes, she knows she willnever be alone again. With The Waiting Time, Ms. Price felt she had found the perfect titlefor her book, as it captures the dual strands of this entrancing story: thewait for the beginning of the Civil War and for the end of the time customdictates Abby must wait before she and Thad can be together. This compellingnovel, which brings a human face to a nation braced for Southern secession, embraces the unrelenting passion that marks an incredible love story.The author of thirty-nine books of both fiction and nonfiction, Eugenia Priceis known around the world as a master storyteller.Sure to be treasured by hermillions of fans.
--Publishers Weekly Eugenia Price provides shadings of complexity on a subject that tends to beportrayed in strictly black and white terms: the reactions of Southerners, bothtransplanted and born-and-bred, to an institution that literally divided thecountry. --Kirkus Reviews