Original Sins

Why would a runaway Virginia slave--having built arewarding life in the East Indies as a silk merchant--risk everything by returning to America in 1840, eighteenyears after taking her freedom? Anibaddh Lyngdoh claimsthat she intends to introduce a new kind of silk to the flounderingAmerican silk industry. But her true reason, as her oldfriend Grace MacDonald Pollocke discovers, is far more personal.Grace, now a Philadelphia portrait painter, undertakesa perilous investigation that leads to the discovery of old sinsand crimes, and the commission of new ones. What laws maybe broken--what sins and crimes committed--in the serviceof a higher justice? Deceit, forgery, fraud, perjury . . . evenmurder?

This novel thrillingly evokes a nineteenth-century Americanot so different from the present: a time of stunning newtechnologies and financial collapse, when religious and racialviews collided with avowed principles of morality and law.