Out of Time
Never second-guess the August Ones!
Transported from New Orleans to 1820s Haiti, as the guest of King Henry I, Madeleine St. Jacques is dazzled by his opulent palace and a fanciful court with a Duke and Duchess of Marmelade and Royal Pages called Bonbons. Slaves only a generation ago, these extravagantly costumed courtiers dance the minuet and worship in a Catholic Cathedral while voodoo ceremonies flourish and the mountains throb with the drums of Africa. Madeleine soon discovers ominous forces at work in a fairytale kingdom as fragile as it is exotic.
“You need not be frightened, my dear. I’m frightened enough for both of us.”
Consumed with power and determined to make Europe respect his tiny island nation, King Henry builds on a Pharaonic scale—grand palaces, sugar plantations, new harbors and the largest fortress in the New World— at a terrible cost of human lives. When his obsessions morph into madness and her world careens toward chaos, Madeleine fears she’ll never learn why she’s been sent back and becomes desperate to return home before running OUT OF TIME.
(Word count 85,503; available as ebook and print)
