DARKEST HOUR takes us back to the story of Dawn's grandmother Lillian, and a thriving plantation called The Meadows. Lillian's happy life is shattered when her sister Emily reveals the shocking secret of her birth. And her heart is torn anew when, in a drunken haze, her father subjects her to the most brutal degradation. Then he loses The Meadows in a card game, and Lillian is faced with a new and terrifying prospect: arrogant, handsome playboy Bill Cutler will return the plantation - only if Lillian will marry him. Too frightened to defy her father, Lillian is forced to leave her childhood home behind, and make a bold new beginning as the mistress of a hotel called Cutler's Cove.