Gwen Bristow 
Plantation Trilogy 
Deep Summer, The Handsome Road, and This Side of Glory

A saga of Louisiana by an author who “belongs among those Southern novelists who are trying to interpret the South and its past in critical terms” (The New York Times). Published in the late 1930s by New York Times–bestselling author Gwen Bristow, the Plantation Trilogy is an epic series of novels that bring to life the history of Louisiana—from its settlement in the late eighteenth century to the realities of slavery and poverty to the post–World War I era—via the intertwined lives of the members of three families: the Sheramys, the Larnes, and the Upjohns.  Deep Summer is the story of Puritan pioneer Judith Sheramy and adventurer Philip Larne, who marry and strive to build an empire in the Louisiana wilderness during the American Revolution.  The Handsome Road tells the story of plantation mistress Ann Sheramy Larne and poor seamstress Corrie May Upjohn, who forge an unlikely bond of friendship as they struggle to survive the cataclysms of the Civil War and Reconstruction.  This Side of Glory presents the story of Eleanor Upjohn, a modern young woman in the early twentieth century who marries charming Kester Larne and struggles to save the debt-ridden plantation that her husband’s ancestors founded more than one hundred years ago.