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Series

Water Wheel

by Gilbert Morris 3 books in this series

Water Wheel is a trilogy of Mississippi riverboat romances set around the Civil War and Reconstruction. Women facing bereavement, debt or social displacement find work and responsibility aboard packet boats whose crews and passengers form unstable travelling communities.

The novels use the riverboat world to explore class, regional reconciliation and economic change through Christian romance. Maritime danger and the aftermath of slavery and war remain important historical pressures, although the central plots and characters are fictional.

Reading order

Books in this series (3 books)

The River Queen cover

1. The River Queen

Gilbert Morris

4.3(648)

Julienne Ashby, 24, must change her pampered ways after her father, a prominent businessman in Natchez, Mississippi, loses their fortune and family home to a bad gambling habit in 1850. Like a fish out of water, she aims to refit their one remaining possession, an old…

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The River Rose cover

2. The River Rose

Gilbert Morris

4.4(201)

Life hasn’t been easy for Jeanne Bettencourt, a widow approaching thirty and struggling to provide for her eight-year-old daughter. But hope arrives in the form of the Helena Rose, a steamboat she unexpectedly inherits from a distant, departed relative. Jeanne’s father had captained a similar vessel…

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The River Palace cover

3. The River Palace

Gilbert Morris

4.2(200)

The Civil War has ended when Yankee Captain Dennis Wainwright and Confederate Sergeant Gage Kennon cross paths. Forming an unlikely alliance, their travels become very interesting when they stumble across a band of Gypsies. Gage saves an older Gypsy woman from a terrible accident, earning the…

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