Cultural and familial fireworks flare when the headstrong teenage daughter of a wealthy New Yorker falls passionately in love with a young man from New Orleans, and from a very different background indeed. What makes this story sizzle and soar are its time and place—the United States during the Civil War and Victorian England—and a couple of key facts about the protagonists. Miss Arabella Leeds is presumably destined to be a proper young gentlewoman, a model WASP before the term was coined. Aubrey Paxton, on the other hand, is the pampered "high yellow" house servant of a wealthy slaveholder.

In the capable hands and fanciful imagination of their creator, these improbable lovers defy convention in a setting where convention—or, at least, its semblance—is all.A romantic adventure rich in historical detail and filled with vivacity and humor,Letters from an Age of Reason is a beautifully crafted tour-de-force of exceptional depth, passion, and power that introduces an extraordinary new writer.