Sunset at Rosalie

Carlin McNair is ten years old in 1910, when she realizes that Rosalie, the Mississippi cotton plantation where she was born and has lived all her life, is failing due to the boll weevil. She worries about her family, especially her father, who has struggled to keep the plantation going. She worries, too, about the black servants and field workers, all of whom she knows well. Her adored Uncle Will envisions agricultural change, but he is tragically limited. Carlin keeps a journal and imagines breaking out of the South. Change comes finally in a destructive form, but Carlin is ready.

Review Highlights

With tender simplicity, Maryland novelist Ann L. McLaughlin portrays Mississippi plantation life caught at an economic and industrial crossroads during the early years of this century.

...Cotton is no king of the agricultural South; generations of plantation owners have overworked the land, depleting the soil...The family struggles to accept the end of the plantation era.

...The book begins with simple dialogue and descriptions of Carlin's early impressions, but it builds momentum as she deals with mental illness, financial ruin and death...the imagery gently evokes the twilight of the plantation era and the historic underpinnings of the South's social and economic plight.
–The Washington Times

A clear-eyed, loving but never sentimental look at the Old South as it tries to adjust to a new order.
–Kirkus Review

Ordering Information

Sunset at Rosalie is sold out. For information on where copies may be found, please contact John Daniel & Co.