It's hot and steamy in the summertime in Alabama, even on top of a mountain, at an exclusive resort hotel for the rich and famous. Fifteen year-old Sophie Franklin doesn't know what to expect when she arrives there with her family, from New York, in the summer of 1892. But what she finds, beside the opulent Hotel Monte Sano, are a handsome stable boy named Jude who just may turn out to be the first true love of her life and his African American friend...