The Walker Inheritance

In Okeela Grove, love burns, love betrays, and across generations, a song rises from the ashes.

Florida, 1920. Sylvie Walker has grown up in the shadow of Walker College, the dream her great-grandparents, Abraham and Anita Walker, built from the ashes of the Civil War. Once a sanctuary for learning and equality, it was consumed by hatred and fire.

Sylvie’s mother, the last surviving Walker, has kept her daughter hidden inside the nursing home she runs, out of sight from the world that took everything from her. So Sylvie is surprised when her mother brings home Hazel Hawthorne, a bruised white girl on the run. Though Sylvie knows their friendship could ignite far more than gossip, nights spent sharing secrets and jazz draw them close.

When the two discover a box of letters, Ellie Cypress’s love notes to Luke Clay, never delivered during the Civil War, their bond deepens. As they pore over Ellie’s words of devotion and betrayal, the past begins to breathe again, blurring the line between memory and warning. Sylvie recognizes the pattern of women who dared to love despite the world’s attempts to silence them, and senses that history is repeating itself.

Now, as the Ku Klux Klan rises and a stranger hunts Hazel, Sylvie must decide whether to risk everything for love, and whether the voices of Okeela Grove can rise once more in defiance.

The Walker Inheritance is a sweeping, romantic historical novel that braids together generations of forbidden love, resilience, and rebirth. Perfect for readers of Jesmyn Ward, Isabel Allende, and Southern Gothic romance, it reminds us that even after fire, something living still hums beneath the ashes.