Captain Isaac McCallister, five years a slave in North Africa, has returned from the grave, and Salem has put out a wary welcome. It is 1803, and the village of Salem, once known only for the dark horrors of its witch trials, is now a cosmopolitan seaport, the richest city in America.

Everyone in Salem knows that Captain McCallister lost his mind in the desert of Barbary. Isaac is a damaged man, looking for a reason to go on living. He finds it when he meets Eleanor Hampton, his step-brother's daughter, an eccentric young painter living in genteel poverty on his estate along with her mother and sister.

Despite the long-standing bitterness between the two families, Isaac is bewitched by this determined, gifted woman, while Eleanor is unexpectedly drawn to him. He's not the man she expected, a coarse merchant prince who could reduce the beauty of art to the banality of dry goods. There is a gallantry in Isaac that couldn't be snuffed out by the hell of Algerian slavery. But his unexpected proposal of marriage sets dark forces out of the past into motion, resulting in a stunning betrayal and a brutal murder. And as her passion for her enigmatic husband consumes her, Eleanor finds there's no danger she's unwilling to face to save her husband from the hangman.

Alice Von Kannon is an author and historian who’s written for both History and the Discovery Channel. She attended L.A. Valley College and Cal State University, and worked many years in advertising as a writer and broadcast producer. She has traveled widely in Europe and the Middle East, and has written extensively on the subject of the Barbary Wars and the birth of the United States Navy. Alice is co-author, with her husband Christopher Hodapp, of several books in the popular “Dummies” series for Wiley publishing, including Conspiracy Theories and Secret Societies for Dummies and The Templar Code for Dummies. Heart’s Blood is her second historical romance, and grew out of her love for the town of Salem, Massachusetts and its glory in the age of tall ships. She presently lives with her husband Chris, landlocked in Indianapolis, Indiana.