Annabele Oakleaf is a poet born in 1856 in Vicksburg, Mississippi. She grew up in the shadow of the American Civil War, witnessing the ruin of her city and the death of her father after the Battle of Vicksburg. Now an adult, she drifts through a rebuilt South feeling estranged from the world around her, her verses shaped by decay, restraint, and a quiet inner unrest she struggles to contain.