THIBODAUXVILLE

He can offer her shelter. Building a life together will demand far more.

Louisiana, 1886. Rosalie Baptiste earns her living with a needle, keeps careful accounts, and saves for a room where she hopes to teach. When she confronts a white plantation foreman about missing wages, she expects the money owed to her. She does not expect Étienne Landry to become someone she might love.

Respect grows into a courtship neither can pursue without consequences. For Rosalie, affection must leave room for independence. For Étienne, loving her means questioning the authority, loyalties, and assumptions that have shaped his life.

Then the sugar workers' strike of 1887 brings displacement and violence. As the Thibodaux Massacre tears through the community, Rosalie fights to keep her injured brother alive. A remote farmhouse offers refuge-but survival is only the beginning.

Beyond its walls wait family prejudice, threatened livelihoods, and the danger of being noticed. Inside, Rosalie and Étienne must learn how to share money, raise children, repair trust, and recognize when protection has become another form of confinement.

Set against the history of Louisiana's sugar country and Laurel Valley Plantation, THIBODAUXVILLE: A Novel of Love and Defiance is an intimate historical romance about a woman determined to shape her own future, a man learning what devotion requires, and the family they dare to build together.