Book excerpt: The Percy family has amassed a tremendous amount of wealth, but the Mississippi River is threatening to break its levees in 1927 and wash away everything they've worked so hard to achieve. To make sure they keep what is theirs, they and other whites force thousands of African-Americans at gunpoint to shore up the levees. Three escape and begin an epic journey North. Among escapees is Cora Mae, a servant who works for Henry Ford and gathers the knowledge and secrets that help guide her family through the Great Depression and the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Meanwhile, Bully, another survivor, begins a sixty-year love affair with Sarah, a woman he wants to call his own in spite of a mother who keeps them apart with a shotgun. Matthew escapes Panther Burn to find a love and fortune worth dying for on the streets of Detroit. Take an epic 60 year journey through the personal struggles of a family as it battles poverty, racism and seemingly insurmountable odds to find their dreams as The Children of Panther Burn.