Burning Candle

Rural Georgia, 1864.As the Civil War fractures the South, a young enslaved woman makes a promise: she will keep a candle burning until her husband returns.While war closes in and the plantation tightens under fear, scarcity, and watchful control, she clings to memory as refuge. Through hunger, punishment, and devastating loss, she holds fast to the belief that he is coming back.But in a system where people are counted as property and grief must remain contained, hope becomes both protection and peril.The Burning Candle is a literary historical novel about endurance, psychological survival, and the fragile line between faith and illusion. It explores what the mind protects when truth is unbearable — and what is taken when silence is mistaken for mercy.