Dead March introduces a new series set during the Civil War. The book opens as Americans, both North and South, talk confidently of a quick and triumphant war. In this glorious spring of 1861, Richmond, Virginia, is not yet the capital of the Confederacy and the streets are not filled with dead and injured soldiers. The city is not free of violent death, though, as two astute and courageous women discover when a grave is robbed by "sack-'em-up men," who supply the medical college with cadavers. The grave yields the body of a young slave woman who, it turns out, met an unnatural death, and the silk scarf left carelessly with her body leads to suspects in every echelon of Richmond society - and to more deaths.Mourning her own loss, Narcissa Powers, a young white widow, begins to investigate these suspicious deaths. Soon she meets and joins forces with Judah Daniel, a free black herbalist and conjure woman. Aided by a spirited young British correspondent who has come to America to make a name for himself as a brilliant war reporter, these two women from opposite ends of society risk their lives as they infiltrate the worlds of men, medicine, and high society. Read Less