We sleep, but our minds never do. Nanette, Rosalie, and their entire family knew that all too well.
We all have dreams, but hopefully, yours are unlike Nanette’s. For so many years, she hoped to outgrow these visions, but she knew that heredity had more in store for her. These deer in the headlight experiences ran in her family. Her father had them, and they began for her as a teen after he showed her the contents of the Rosewood box. Older than the cabin they occupied for generations in Vidalia, Louisiana, across the river from Natchez, Mississippi, the box contained old documents and charcoal renderings of long-deceased relations. Nanette’s ancestral research proved much of what the dreams portrayed. Still, routinely there were discrepancies between what she witnessed through the actual eyes of relatives and what historians recorded; bits of truth that mattered.
The mind is so powerful it fools us into believing we’ve never seen a repeated dream before. As if seeing again for the first time, Nanette knew she would die. How could she not? The blood-drenched warrior stood over her with his raised club. Witnessing the day of the 1729 massacre at Fort Rosalie would soon help her to understand that nothing is forgotten. Witnesses won’t let that happen.
Sleep should not be a nemesis, nor living relatives. Her granddaughter Camille and her family moved in after they lost everything. A young daughter dying of cancer was unaffordable in so many ways. Bitterness from an ungrateful person was an added insult as Camille’s painful life erupted in every direction.
The only blessing was the surviving twin, Rosalie. Nanette and her deceased husband, Edward, couldn’t save Camille’s mother, Ann, but could Rosalie be saved? To whom would an aging Nanette bequeath the Rosewood box?
Take a walk with Nanette to find we are never alone. Sit with the Provost matriarch on the bench Edward placed on the levee for her and share her special space as history comes to life.
