Color Me Yours

Book excerpt: The pain of forbidden love and dark family secrets. Anson is a White young man, and Mattie, a half-White girl. They grow up together playing on Anson's family manor. Negroes and Whites are curious as to why Mattie and her mother stay on White folk's property. Slavery is over. Anson and Mattie plan to attend college. Young love and lust blossom between the two. Secretly, they meet in the cotton field to be alone and think about the future. Their meetings in the shed turn into lovemaking. Mattie becomes pregnant with Anson's child. Pressure from Anson's mother causes him to marry a White girl against his will. He leaves with his new bride, Caroline, to attend college in California, then travels to Paris to study painting with known artists. Mattie is heartbroken. On the rebound, she marries Negro entrepreneur Levi Collins while attending college. He agrees to raise her daughter, Aimee, as his own. But he's abusive. Mattie escapes with her daughter and takes his hidden money. He is out for revenge and wants to cut her up so no one will look at her again. Word gets back to Anson upon returning home with his wife to have their baby born in America. Anson's brother, Peter, gets his Klan buddies to carve Levi's face monstrously and carve KKK in his chest. Levi bleeds to death. All is not well between Anson and his wife. No one knows why, except Anson's sister, Annabelle. Could it be what she knows would shake the foundation of the Wellington family? Many dark secrets surround Beauville Manor.