First-time author Linwood Sutton's novel of the Dawson family is truly captivating. The family's dysfunctionality and separation was not uncommon during those trying times in the mid-1800s. Young Luke Dawson grows up on Mimosa, the family plantation, and forms a close bond to his adoring mother Addie and brother Gideon. Luke's relationship with his unfaithful father Jake Dawson is tumultuous, to say the least. The die is cast when an intoxicated Jake Dawson exposes one of Mimosa's closely guarded secrets, which devastates young Luke and pushes him farther away from Mimosa and the southern town of Kinston, North Carolina. Luke finds himself entrenched in the War between the States, all the while with one true life mission to one day locate his uncle Adam Dawson, who can put an end to the madness the secret held. Mimosa is a true page-turner that eloquently places the reader into the hills, valleys, and fauna of the young nation's landscape and will leave readers spellbound.