The Cherokee Rose

The novel opens with a ghostly, unnamed female figure watching from the attic of the Cherokee Rose Plantation in rural North Georgia as a man with iron-gray eyes excavates the Strangers' Graveyard, a nearby burial ground for Black and Indigenous people. He pours cement over the gutted graves and begins surveying the adjacent plantation. Fearing he will destroy the buried legacy of her foremothers, the figure opens an attic window, releasing two centuries of dust into the wind to summon descendants who can protect the past.

Three contemporary women are drawn separately to the plantation. Jinx Micco, a Creek and Cherokee writer and part-time librarian in Ocmulgee, Oklahoma, lives in the house she inherited from her Great-Aunt Angie, a revered tribal historian. After Jinx publishes a newspaper column portraying a Creek mission-school student named Mary Ann Battis as a traitor, Deb Tom, a Black Creek elder—a person of both African American and Creek Native American heritage—confronts her about the piece's racial insensitivity and reveals that Aunt Angie harbored biases against Black Creeks. Jinx discovers her aunt's biographical files are organized by race, with Black Creeks segregated into a lower drawer. Deb gives Jinx a centuries-old letter signed by Mary Ann Battis, in which Mary Ann explains she cannot leave the Cherokee Rose Plantation because she must tend the graves of her "other mothers." Deb challenges Jinx to travel east and uncover what happened to Mary Ann, telling Jinx she abandoned her doctoral dissertation not from grief but from cowardice. Jinx discovers the Hold Plantation, the last place Battis lived, is being auctioned by the state of Georgia, and she drives east.

Cheyenne Rosina Cotterell, a lead interior designer in Atlanta, plans to buy the Hold Plantation and convert it into a bed-and-breakfast. She believes the plantation connects to her family through her grandmother's stories about a Cherokee ancestor and a secret list recording the names of Black Indians—people of both African American and Native American heritage—on the estate. An avid genealogist, Cheyenne can trace her lineage to the 1860s, after which oral history fills the gap. She tours the Hold House and is captivated but learns that Mason Allen, a powerful local developer, also wants the property for a luxury housing development.

Ruth Mayes, a Black biracial magazine writer at Abode, a Minneapolis shelter magazine, dreads a forced vacation because unstructured time triggers painful memories. Her mother, originally from Georgia, died when Ruth was a child, and Ruth's white father raised her alone, shadowed by rumors of his involvement in the death. Ruth discovers the same article about the Hold House auction and drives south.

At the Murray County Courthouse auction, Cheyenne wins a fierce bidding war against Mason Allen, securing the property for $1.5 million. Allen tells her to "sleep tight" and "don't let the bedbugs bite." Meanwhile, Jinx finds a Moravian church history in a Chattanooga bookshop that describes a diary kept by missionary Anna Rosina Gamble at the Hold Hill Mission on the plantation; the diary is described as lost. Near the Hold House, Jinx meets Sally Perdue, a young local mother and history enthusiast, who directs her to a cabin rental run by Adam Battis, a local park ranger whose surname—shared with the Creek girl Jinx is researching—startles her.

The three women converge at the plantation. Ruth discovers that Cheyenne, her old acquaintance from Camp Idlewood, a Black summer camp they both attended as girls, now owns the property. During a tour, Ruth is captivated by a hidden rose garden, and the group examines a round mud-and-clay structure near the river cane that predates James Hold's era. A bitter argument erupts between Cheyenne and Ruth, exposing old wounds: Cheyenne's obsessive identification with Cherokee ancestry and Ruth's unresolved grief over her mother's death.

Jinx meets Adam Battis, who reveals Mary Ann Battis was his great-great-great-grandmother and is buried in the Strangers' Graveyard, now under Mason Allen's cement. Adam has spent years saving to restore the cabin on the Hold estate where his grandmother grew up. That same day, in the old mission cabin on the estate, Jinx kisses Ruth, and Ruth sees an apparition: a teenage girl with honeycomb-colored skin and braided hair standing in the doorway. The vision vanishes, but Ruth insists they return that night. Digging beneath the cabin threshold, they discover a carved wooden box containing brittle manuscript pages wrapped in scarlet silk: the diary of Anna Rosina Gamble, dated 1815.

Jinx reads the diary aloud. Anna Rosina describes James Hold as a violent tyrant who beats his wives, rapes the enslaved woman Patience, and tortures his slaves. Hold's younger wife, Peggy, befriends Patience. The free Black preacher Samuel Cotterell becomes a father figure to the mission children. Mary Ann Battis arrives at 14, a brilliant, traumatized transfer student from a burned Creek mission school. The diary chronicles devastating events: Hold hangs the enslaved craftsman Isaac, then reclaims Patience and has the overseer Talley beat her to death. Earlier, Patience gave birth to a son fathered by Hold; the women name him Adam and claim him as Mary Ann's child to prevent him from being counted among Hold's property. Anna Rosina and Samuel become lovers, and Anna Rosina becomes pregnant.

The plantation women organize a mass escape during a lunar eclipse, sending 28 enslaved people north along a trail of wild strawberry plants. Mary Ann inscribes the escapees' names in shells on the walls of the round mud house. Faith, an enslaved woman with a disability, bakes poison into corn cakes for Hold, but before the poison takes effect, Peggy shoots him dead at a tavern. Peggy frees the remaining enslaved people and renames the plantation the Cherokee Rose in honor of Patience. Anna Rosina gives birth to a son she names Isaac Samuel Cotterell, then accepts a cup of tansy tea from Faith that eases her into death. Her last entry asks Mary Ann to destroy the diary, but Mary Ann buries it instead.

Mason Allen escalates his intimidation of Cheyenne through vandalism and arson. During a grass fire set in the yard, Ruth sees Mary Ann's ghost a final time, releasing glowing pages into the rain. The fire illuminates the mud house's walls, revealing the shell-inscribed names of the escaped slaves. Ruth reads them aloud and is flooded by suppressed memories of witnessing her father's violence against her mother.

The historical connections become clear. Cheyenne's ancestors are not Cherokee royalty but Anna Rosina and Samuel Cotterell: Her family name descends from the free Black preacher. Adam Battis is the descendant of baby Adam, the son of James Hold and Patience, making him the property's rightful heir. Cheyenne sells the Hold House to Adam for a nominal down payment, retaining a role as co-owner. With her father's lawyer, she confronts Mason Allen with a cease-and-desist order for building on the Strangers' Graveyard, citing federal preservation laws.

The group holds a farewell ceremony at the burial mounds, where Jinx burns Aunt Angie's sweetgrass braid. Ruth and Jinx then discover that the attic ceiling beams are carved with Cherokee roses made of mica centered with circles of pure gold, Peggy's tribute to Patience. Ruth collects garden seedlings to transplant at Aunt Angie's cottage garden in Oklahoma, which Jinx intends to make her own. Jinx resolves to finish her dissertation and write the plantation's full history.

In an epilogue set the following April, the Cherokee Rose has become a bed-and-breakfast honoring its complete history. Adam and Cheyenne have used the attic gold to restore the property. Sally runs a shop in the outbuildings. The diary rests in a glass case above the fireplace. Ruth reflects that three very different women were called to carry on the same story, and that Mary Ann would have approved.