In the sultry, oppressive summer of 1860, beneath the sprawling, moss-draped oaks of Willowbrook Plantation in rural Georgia, the humid air hummed with the distant songs of field hands and the overwhelmingly sweet scent of magnolia in full bloom. The devastating storm of the American Civil War loomed darkly on the national horizon, but for the moment, the grand estate was entirely consumed by the frantic preparations for a joyous, high-society occasion. It was the eve of the wedding of Miss Eleanor Hargrove, the beautiful, sheltered twenty-year-old daughter of the wealthy plantation owner, Mr. Theodore Hargrove.