Earlene "Piper" Mills, a former Olympic hopeful from Savannah who injured her back and neck during an equestrian jumping competition, has given up on life since her disabling accident. Following the death of her grandmother Annabelle, an Alzheimer's victim, Piper is left a gold angel charm containing a Latin inscription, pages of a diary and a paper clipping of a Negro baby found dead in the river. The mystery of the three girls contained in the diary leads Piper to discover a hidden room in the attic containing a small bed, baby bassinet and a blue baby blanket. Regret at not really knowing Annabelle, the woman who raised her since age six following her parents' deaths, has Piper seeking answers.

Ninety-year-old Lillian Harrington-Ross, one of the girls in the diary, refuses to see Piper. Lillian has lived with guilt over not forgiving Annabelle. Posing as a genealogist, Piper travels to Asphodel Meadows, the horse farm that is Lillian's home. Renting their cottage, Piper begins her search for the truth.

As Piper works with Lillian's grandson, his two daughters and Lillian's blind granddaughter, they try to uncover the mystery involving Lillian, Annabelle and Josie Montet, their black friend. Piper not only rediscovers her grandmother, but she restores her own life and love of horses. Piper must now uncover the real mystery of the tragedy that tore the three girls apart.

Karen White has written a remarkable story of the South during the troubling times between the whites and the blacks. Her gripping story of family secrets and hidden legacies is intriguing and suspenseful. The characters are warm and loving with distinct personalities. The author keeps you in utter captivity as each detail is woven into layers of suspense. Your heart will go out to the three girls caught in the stirring realities of being in the wrong place at the wrong period of time for a forbidden love.

Book Summary

The award-winning author of The Memory of Water delivers a gripping tale of family, fate, and forgiveness.

When Piper Mills was twelve, she helped her grandfather bury a box that belonged to her grandmother in the backyard. For twelve years, it remained untouched.

Now a near fatal riding accident has shattered Piper’s dreams of Olympic glory. After her grandfather’s death, she inherits the house and all its secrets, including a key to a room that doesn’t exist—or does it? And after her grandmother is sent away to a nursing home, she remembers the box buried in the backyard. In it are torn pages from a scrapbook, a charm necklace—and a newspaper article from 1929 about the body of an infant found floating in the Savannah River. The necklace’s charms tell the story of three friends during the 1920s— each charm added during the three months each friend had the necklace and recorded her life in the scrapbook. Piper always dismissed her grandmother as not having had a story to tell. And now, too late, Piper finds she might have been wrong.