Daughter of Twin Oaks

A Secret Refuge, Book 1

By: Lauraine Snelling

Narrated by: Meredith Mitchell

Seeking to fulfill the promise she made to her dying father, 18-year-old Jesselynn Highwood determines to take her little brother and the family's remaining thoroughbreds from the Twin Oaks plantation in Kentucky to her uncle's farm in Missouri, where they will be safe for the remainder of the Civil War.

Dodging Confederate and Union troops, they ride at night and hide during the day. Finally, after encountering hunger, sickness, and the devastation of war, they arrive in Missouri only to discover that the situation there puts them in even greater danger. But Jesselynn will stop at nothing to save her family, the horses, and whatever remains of Twin Oaks.

©2000 Lauraine Snelling (P)2015 Tantor

Cliffhanger…

Please note you will need to read the full trio of books in this series to have the whole story. In the end of the series it is bittersweet and mildly incomplete. I don’t know if that is the norm for this author or not. This was my first series by her. I enjoyed learning more about the civil war however, I am not sure this series was worth being left wanting in the end. I might have enjoyed it more knowing it would be bittersweet.

Excellent!

This was one of the Best audio books 📚 that I have listened to. Everything was excellent about it. Thank You 😊

It’s an unusual and intriguing story

The reader is excellent. She doesn’t sound like one person doing various voices, it just seems like the characters are all there. Even children.

Historical fiction during USA Civil War

An enjoyable telling of how life may have been during the war for the 3 grown daughters and 3 sons of a wealthy family which had been very good to their slaves before the war. Their struggles and sorrows, their accomplishments and good deeds, their travels, and the changes in their lives brought about ultimately by the war are looked at through rose colored glasses. I enjoyed reading this 3-book series, even though I don't believe it to represent more than about 5% of the lives of Southerners during that period if time. It did show many different characters' experiences, which taken separately may have been quite possible, including how several former slaves adjusted to freedom individually, how a maimed Rebel soldier failed to adjust to being able to keep fighting, how gentle women cared for sick and wounded soldiers, how 2 older women managed to live through the chaos they were in the midst of, how there was forgiveness in some cases between northerners and southerners immediately after the war, and more. The 3 books definitely sparked my interest to read other authors who wrote fiction meant to take place during and shortly after the War Between the States in the USA in the 1860s.

Loved

Really enjoyed the story and the reading. I’ve enjoyed the series with this author. Would recommend