In the next chapter, Daphne describes seeing Lila to the reader. During Lila’s family vacation to the haunted plantation, Lila would see Daphne and other ghosts around the house.

Daphne was a slave who lived and died on the Laurel Oaks plantation two centuries ago. The other narrator is a teenage girl named Daphne. One narrator is a rebellious teenage girl named Lila from the present day. The narrators of the story alternate between chapters. This book was written using the rhetorical mode of narration.

She was hanged for it despite any evidence proving she committed these crimes.

In the book, a young slave girl was accused of poisoning her master’s wife and two daughters. The theme of this book is to not believe all the rumors you may hear. It is suspenseful, mysterious, and spooky from the beginning to the end. The author’s main purpose for writing this novel is to entertain readers. This middle grade novel was inspired by the author's visit to the plantation and her experiences there.Īt the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.The Secret of Laurel Oaks is a ghost story based on stories about The Myrtles Plantation in St. Laurel Oaks is a thinly disguised version of the legendary Myrtles Plantation in Louisiana, which is on the Smithsonian's list of the ten most haunted places in America. Shifting back and forth from Lila's world in the present to Daphne's world in the past, the true story of what really happened that fateful night finally comes to light. Daphne's spirit senses that Lila is the very person she's been waiting for, the one who can prove her innocence so her spirit can rest at long last. One spirit eager to tell her story is Daphne, a slave girl at Laurel Oaks in the 1840s, who was blamed for the poisoning deaths of two girls and their mother. But secretly, Lila suspects there are ghostly presences willing to communicate with her, and her alone. When Lila and her family visit Laurel Oaks Plantation in Louisiana, her parents and brother scoff at the claim that the house is haunted. A haunting historical mystery based on real life events, told in the alternating points of view of a contemporary girl and a 19th century slave accused of a horrible crime.

The secret of laurel oaks by lois ruby