A riveting first novel, this jambalaya of human passion and deceit is set in the New Orleans of l953. The story of one man's attempt to change a culture rooted in generations of Southern white supremacy, it is a saga of the Old and the New South, of love and betrayal, terror and escape. Fletcher and Ursula Christian are glamorous leaders of New Orleans Society. Asked to develop a pilot program to admit Negro students, Fletcher, a department chair at prestigious Lemoigne University, accepts the challenge. He hires the wife of a new faculty member to assist him. When Fletcher's program is headlined after a press conference, his aristocratic Southern wife is outraged and secretly mobilizes powerful political and social forces to block Fletcher's attempt to integrate. Through a jasmine-heavy summer into the flame-filled fall, Fletcher and Ursula pursue conflicting goals until a series of devastating events brings them into a final confrontation, a confrontation between the future and the past, between two players at odds in a rich and deep culture.