As the yellow fever epidemic continues to ravage New Orleans and the orphanages become more crowded, Marie-Grace and Cecile help with the orphans, until Marie-Grace learns that her Uncle Luc's fiancee, Mademoiselle Oceane, has fallen ill.

Cecile Rey, whose prosperous family are free people of color, makes friends with Marie-Grace Gardner, a doctor's daughter who has just returned to her native New Orleans in 1853, and persuades her to change places at their separate Mardi Gras balls.

"Although slavery was outlawed in the northern states in 1827, the illegal slave trade continued in the one place modern readers would least expect, the streets and ports of America's great northern metropolis: New York City. In 'The Kidnapping Club,' historian Jonathan Daniel Wells takes readers to a rapidly changing city rife with contradiction, where social hierarchy clashed with a rising middle class, Black citizens jostled for an equal voice...