Southern Ruby / Belinda Alexandra.

Amanda Darby has been living with her grandmother since she was two years old. If not for one horrific twist of fate she might have grown up in New Orleans instead of Sydney. She might have been Amandine Lalande instead of Amanda Darby. She might have known her parents. Nothing can change what happened to them, but when tragedy strikes again, a link to her life on the other side of the world is exposed. The American family Amanda thought dead to her have been seeking her for years. Travelling to New Orleans, Amanda finds a vibrant city of contrasts. There's jazz, burlesque, ghost stories and shocking burial rites. But nothing is as astonishing as Grandma Ruby and the tale of forbidden love she reveals to Amanda during candlelit nights in the grand old Lalande mansion. Could this demure woman of impeccable Creole heritage have loved and lost and carried a burning secret from the troubled 1950s till now? Before Amanda can make sense of Ruby's double life, long-feared Hurricane Katrina hits. The city is battered and neighbourhoods cut off, and Amanda risks losing not only the family she has just found, but friends who have stolen her heart.