Charleston, Modern Day: Adeline Miller, a preservationist, gets a call from a Charleston psychiatrist who wants her to restore his Battery Street mansion to its former glory. Thinking this might be her big break, she relocates to Charleston, moves into the third floor of the mansion, and gets to work. As she begins to discover secrets from the past about the family who once lived there, her future begins to get a lot more complicated than she ever expected.Charleston, 1859: Shannon Ravenel, the daughter of wealthy rice planter King Ravenel, is destined to marry into South Carolina's elite planting class. That conclusion is thrown into question when her brother brings home his friend from the Naval Academy, Massachusetts-bred John Thomas Haley. Love aside, can a planter's daughter and an abolitionist's son forge a future in a nation that is ripping apart at the seams, or does fate have other plans for both?