World-famous jazz composer and performer Jonas Clermont returns to Louisiana to take possession of the haunted Sutherland Creek Plantation. He must dig up the bones of his father before others find them. In 1905 Louisiana, five-year-old Jonas watches the lynching of his great-grandfather William, a freed slave. The trauma renders Jonas mute for the next decade, until his innate ability to play the piano manifests. Jonas, a musical prodigy, succeeds despite prejudice and drug addiction. Hidden in Jonas's past is an interracial affair that led to murder. That secret threatens his career, fame, and fortune. The solution to his predicament lies within the walls of his newly acquired mansion, but will the spirit living there allow it? The Magnolias of Sutherland Creek chronicles the parallel lives of the Clermont and Sutherland families from the dawn of the Civil War to 1960.