The Veil of Maples and Pines

When a young prodigy in 1850s Virginia begins to question the morality of slavery, will he have the fortitude to take action?

Gideon Covington is embroiled in the bloody siege at Vicksburg during the Civil War and is not confident that he will survive the battle. He has therefore decided to reveal the extraordinary events that brought him here.

Gideon's tale begins when he is twelve years old. The boy is considered to be a genius and although he longs for a university education, he seems destined to remain in rural Virginia as he is heir to the ancestral plantation. Family tragedy accelerates his fate and his hope to further his education begins to evaporate. Fortunately he finds a mentor in a visiting professor. The lessons of the eccentric teacher are academic in nature, but so thought provoking that Gideon begins to do the unimaginable for a Southerner: question the morality of slavery. However, these lessons are interrupted when the owner of a neighboring plantation dies under suspicious circumstances. Under the professor's tutelage, Gideon investigates the death using the stories of Edgar Allan Poe as a model. The culmination of the mystery leads the boy to confront not only the murderer, but the institution of slavery itself.

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