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It's 1921. Cleo Snow travels with her cousin, Neill Connolly, to
Sago Island, Ga. to lessen the sadness of her fiance's death in The Great War (later called World War I). He'd been
missing, presumed killed in France, and his body recently returned home.
America's victory celebration is in
full swing. The Flapper Era has begun. Cleo is poised between her Victorian raising and post-war liberal ideas. Women got
the vote in 1920. They work – Cleo’s a nurse. Hemlines are rising. Jargon is spicier. Songs are racier. The fox
trot is the cat’s meow. Everyone smokes coffin nails. The great experiment, Prohibition, has ushered in an epoch of
fascinating gangsters and illegal speakeasies. Drinking and dancing go together like bathtub gin and painted dolls.
On Sago Island Cleo meets fly-boy hero Graham Henry, the dazzling son of a steel magnate. They fall in love dancing to "Whispering",
the rage song of the year. Complicating their love-at-first-sight is Shafer and Josie Drake. Shafer is Graham's cousin.
He lost his liquor business and is about to lose his money-loving wife, Josie.
The morning after the dance, Josie
is missing. A note she purportedly wrote says she's leaving the island to get a divorce and marry Graham. Graham swears
the note's a lie and that he and Josie were nothing more than "boozing" companions.
Where did Josie
go and when? Did she return to New York where she danced in the Ziegfeld Follies? No one saw her leave the island. But Cleo
knows Graham had nothing to do with her disappearance because Cleo was with him in the lighthouse the night Josie vanished.
Cleo vows she will never confess to making love with a man she's known only two days. But Will Graham compromise Cleo
to clear himself?
Island resident, the enigmatic Doc Holliday, who claims to be related to the infamous gunslinger,
is a veterinarian and a falconer. His falcon, Billy, captures Cleo’s severely crushed heart. Cleo captures Doc’s
heart, but she’s reeling over her gullibility and her body’s occasional betrayal of her resolve. Will he win her
with his darkly sensuous charm?
Everyone on Sago, it seems, has something to hide, even villagers who distill
homemade hooch - and it all pivots around Josie and Graham. With her spirit firmed by shame and determination, Cleo vows
to uncover the truth and thus keep her own secret..
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