City of Natchez and the Lanfear Family

Located on the Mississippi River, some 90 miles southwest of Jackson, the capital of Mississippi, and 85 miles north of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the city of Natchez is named for the Natchez tribe of Native Americans who lived in the vicinity through the arrival of Europeans in the eighteenth century.

Established by French colonists in 1716, Natchez is one of the oldest and most important European settlements in the lower Mississippi River Valley, and served as the capital of the Mississippi Territory and then the state of Mississippi. It predates Jackson, which replaced Natchez as the capital in 1822, by more than a century. The strategic location of Natchez, on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River, ensured that it would become a pivotal center of trade, commerce, and the interchange of Native American, European, and African-American cultures in the region for the first two centuries of its existence. In U. S. history, it is recognized particularly for its role in the development of the Old Southwest during the first half of the nineteenth century. It was the southern terminus of the historic Natchez Trace, which provided many pilots of flatboats and keelboats a road back to their homes in the Ohio River Valley after unloading their cargo in the city.

The Lanfear family immigrated to the territory of New Orleans from France as the French began to settle along the Mississippi river.  Dominic's ancestors moved up the river and settled in Natchez, Mississippi which was the home of several Indian Nations including the Natchez Indians and the Choctaw Nation.  Skirmishes and wars broke out as the French attempted to seize the land and build their plantations to grow indigo, cotton and tobacco.  It was a dangerous and hard time with the slaughter of many.

As the Civil War grips the nation, our story begins in the peaceful community of Natchez where life seems to be normal but a current of uneasiness is coming to the surface as the living and the dead clash in an attempt to lift a family curse.  Mirisa finds herself absorbed into the past as she deals with the isolation of living on the Lanfear plantation.