Lalita Tademy was a successful vice president at Sun Microsystems when she began what became an obsessive two-year search to uncover the story of her family's roots. It was a personal odyssey that took her back to the early l800s and a small rural community on Louisiana's Cane River. There, digging through official records, conducting interviews, and relying on the expertise of professional genealogists, Tademy was able to bring to vivid life four remarkable women -- her great, great, great, great grandmother Elisabeth; her great, great, great grandmother Suzette; her great, great grandmother Philomene; and her great-grandmother Emily.