Friendship, competition, and love bring four families together, linking antebellum Georgia’s mountains and coast in Sautee Shadows , Book One of the Georgia Gold Series. Jack Randall's Savannah shipping family follows the example of other coastal elite by building a summer home in Habersham County's foothills. Attracted by the possibility of future railroad tourism, Jack purchases a hotel in Clarkesville, where he meets an unexpected competitor—young, lovely, and spirited Mahala Franklin. Mahala helps her grandmother manage The Franklin Hotel. Orphaned daughter of a man murdered for his gold and a Cherokee mother, Mahala was raised by a farm family in the Sautee Valley and torn from them by her paternal grandmother as a young teen. Mahala's life has been focused on unraveling the clues left to her in her father's strongbox and wondering if his murderer is still living in the same town. Separated by age and class boundaries, Mahala and Jack refuse to acknowledge their attraction. But Mahala is constantly brought into Jack's circles—initially by competition, but also by virtue of her unexpected friendship with Carolyn Calhoun, a wealthy but shy socialite. Carolyn’s family exerts increasing pressure for her to choose a husband between two very different brothers—handsome and self-assured Devereaux Rousseau, set to inherit his family’s rice plantation and the upland farm in Habersham, and Dylan Rousseau, who follows the call to become a minister. As the country hurtles toward division, Habersham’s “summer people” must choose sides—and alliances that could sustain or destroy them in the coming decade.