The scourges of heaven

A novel of prejudice and plague, The Scourges of Heaven sweeps across centuries and generations. The story centers around Cynthia Ann Ferguson, orphaned aboard a vessel carrying immigrants, hopes, dreams - and cholera - from the Old World to the New. Cynthia's tale unfolds in the midst of the first of four great cholera epidemics to sweep across America in the mid-nineteenth century. Her journey through life, from New Orleans, up the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, and across the Bluegrass to Lexington, Kentucky, parallels that of the deadly scourge. Upon her arrival in Lexington, Cynthia encounters Bill "King" Solomon, a hard-drinking giant who has taken it upon himself to bury plague victims. She also meets Jem, a free black, with whom she forges a bond that develops into a forbidden love. When the plague claims both Cynthia's husband and her young son, she is left to question her faith and her future.