After the Civil War, a young Confederate bride finds herself living in the shadow of her husband's first love. Having lost her fiancé in battle, Lora Blair knew it was the heartache of war, not true love, that drew her to Union soldier Wade Taylor, a grieving widower who still mourned his late wife, Virginia. Married quickly in the ravished little Southern border town where Lora was born, they headed back North to Wade's Staten Island mansion, where he lives with his motherless son and bitterly unwelcoming family. It's not just Lora's Southern roots among wealthy Yankees that are met with severe disapproval. Lora knows that she'll forever be in the shadow of Wade's adored, devotedly maternal, and peerlessly beautiful first wife. Though her most dangerous opposition is yet to come, Lora must face the secrets hidden in the Taylors' past-including those Virginia took with her to an early grave.