A powerful, engrossing story of a biracial woman who flees to Paris at the start of the Haitian Revolution and works her way into the inner circle of Robespierre and his mistress, where she must contend with her place in both uprisings.

Sylvie de Rosiers, the mulatto daughter of a rich planter in 1791 Saint-Domingue, is both a lady born to privilege and a damning reminder of her father's infidelity with an enslaved woman. After a violent slave uprising begins the Haitian Revolution, Sylvie and her brother leave their parents and old lives behind to flee unwittingly into another uprising- austere and radical Paris. Sylvie quickly becomes enamored with the aims of the Revolution, as well as with the revolutionaries themselves-most notably Maximilien Robespierre and his mistress, Cornélie Duplay.

As a rising leader and abolitionist, Robespierre sees an opportunity to exploit Sylvie's race and abandonment of her aristocratic roots as an example of his ideals, while the strong-willed Cornélie offers Sylvie guidance in free thought and a safe harbor. Sylvie battles her past complicities in a slave society and her future within this new world order as she finds herself increasingly tugged between Robespierre's ideology and Cornélie's love. When the Reign of Terror descends, she must decide: become an accomplice while another kingdom rises on the bones of innocents…or risk losing her head.

Story Locale: Saint-Domingue (now called Haiti) + Paris, France