The Waiting Time

Book excerpt: A new edition of Eugenia Price's final novel, presented by Turner Publishing From one of America’s best-loved storytellers, The Waiting Time is an ambitious, romantic, historically rich epic, sure to delight new and loyal readers alike. Spirited Abigail Banes dreams her newly married life coastal Georgia will be lived amid spreading magnolia trees, where lovers walk and whisper along blossom-lined paths. But her dreams are shattered when a fatal accident claims her husband, Eli, leaving her sole proprietor of their rice plantation—and the slaves that work the magnificent land. Forging a new life for herself, Abby finds a new identity—as a feminist before her time, and abolitionist before there is a way to free slaves. As she struggles with her inheritance, Abby finds herself turning to her new overseer, Thaddeus Greene. And, at a time when love is forbidden to her, Abby realizes Thad is destined to take Eli’s place in her heart. Eli could never have known that by hiring Thad he had given a lasting gift to his beloved wife—for from the moment Abby gazes into Thad’s penetrating gray eyes, she knows she will never be alone again. With The Waiting Time, Ms. Price felt she had found the perfect title for her book, as it captures the dual strands of this entrancing story: the wait for the beginning of the Civil War and for the end of the time custom dictates Abby must wait before she and Thad can be together. This compelling novel, which brings a human face to a nation braced for Southern secession, embraces the unrelenting passion that marks an incredible love story.