The Mirk and Midnight Hour

This story based on Tam Lin, a Scottish ballad about a girl rescuing her lover from the queen of the faeries, takes place during the Civil War. The tough and genteel heroine, Violet, has grown used to the horrors of war, and nurses the Confederate soldiers brought to town. One day, she finds a wounded Union soldier, a young writer named Thomas Lynn, who is being hidden in the wild by the mysterious Van Zeldts, a trio of young Africans who live with a strange white man who is both a witch doctor and a real physician...but he hides something sinister. Violet accidentally befriends the young Van Zeldt woman. But when Violet learns the otherworldly Van Zeldts plan to sacrifice Thomas to a strange god, she has to stand against their terrifying enchantments. This was such a new and compelling approach to an old theme, I felt I was reading a wholly original story. The Van Zeldts were fantastic creations, African faery folk.