Daughter of Twin Oaks by Lauraine Snellig

282 pages

6 1/4 hours

This is the beginning of a series on the Civil War. Daughter of Twin Oaks, Jesslyn Highwood is bound by a promise to her father on his deathbed which leads her to masquerade as a young man to lead the thoroughbred horses that are the lifeblood of Twin Oaks to her uncle's horse farm in southern Missouri. She has already lost her Mother to childbirth, her father and a brother to the war and has sent her two sisters to live in Richmond with an Aunt. This leaves her with the responsibility for the plantation with the slaves, her younger brother who is nearly a baby and the promise that she is bound to keep.