The South is embroiled in a bitter Civil War by the time Ella Corrigan discovers that Corrigans’ Pool is much more than the exquisitely beautiful pond she had thought it to be all her life. But by the time she learns its dangerous secret she is deeply entangled in a secret of her own … one that has made her a virtual prisoner, hopelessly trapped in a world dreadfully different from her previous existence as mistress of her gentle father’s palatial plantation home along the Savannah River. Stunned by what she sees, she must harden herself to her new surroundings or perish … along with the cowed and scarred Negroes who toil in her husband’s rice swamps and cotton fields.

Bitter with thoughts of the darkly handsome stranger who promised to marry her and then left town without a word, Ella Corrigan hastily marries a neighboring planter—a man whose cold indifference is merely a disguise for cunning insanity. At her new home, Ella is stunned by her husband’s cruelty to his slaves. Her own gentle family has owned slaves for generations, but now she questions the concept of human bondage for first time. She longs for the comfort of her family and misses the beautiful spring that had inspired her great-great-grandfather to build Greenpoole Plantation, the spring most people called “Corrigans’ Pool” and that the slaves called “Conjuring Pool,” for reasons they could not explain when asked. The South is embroiled in a bitter Civil War by the time Ella Corrigan discovers that Corrigans’ Pool is much more than the exquisitely beautiful pond she had thought it to be all her life. But by the time she learns its dangerous secret she is deeply entangled in a secret of her own … one that has made her a virtual prisoner, hopelessly trapped in a world dreadfully different from her previous existence as mistress of her father’s palatial plantation home along the Savannah River. At first helpless, she must harden herself to her new surroundings or perish … along with the cowed and scarred Negroes who toil in her husband’s rice swamps and cotton fields. As Union troops burn their way across Georgia and swarm onto Ella’s property and then into Savannah, she must make a harrowing journey downriver where danger lurks behind every shadowy bend. Can she save herself and those who depend on her? What will she do when the past that she has long blamed for her misery steps unexpectedly out of the darkness to face her?

Dot Ryan, born and raised in Bee County in South Texas, makes her home in “the beautiful city by the sea,” Corpus Christi, Texas, with husband, Sam. Corrigans' Pool is Dot’s first novel. She is busy writing her second and third works of fiction.