So far back

"Louisa Hilliard is the last descendant of one of Charleston's oldest and most prominent families. A sixty-year-old spinster, she has spent her life doing good works, volunteering, and, more recently, tending to the needs of her aging mother. But when a hurricane floods the city, Louisa's life is turned upside down. Trying to put her house back in order, she comes upon the diary of one of her ancestors. The diary describes Charleston in the 1830s, when it was a vibrant port city of whites and blacks, and recounts the story of Diana, a nineteenth-century slave who worked for the Hilliards but…