In New Orleans, where old Southern lineages root as deep and tangled as the haughty Cypress, two powerful families become entrenched in a battle to preserve pedigrees. For the past nine years, Thierry Chevalier, the strikingly handsome, well-bred, polished son of one of the oldest, most powerful white families in Louisiana, has been harboring an impassioned desire to captivate the woman of his dreams. His desire, Angelique Dubois. Graceful, delicate and sensually delectable, Angelique seems as unattainable as she is desirous: the daughter of New Orleans' mayor; member of a proud Black Creole family; and engaged to another man. But when opportunity opens, their fates are magnetized. The tempest of passion, power and pride that erupts is more sweeping than a steamy Gulf Coast monsoon.
