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Book One of The Saga of Carolina

The Rice Kingdom

Forbidden love. Stolen freedom. African knowledge powerful enough to transform a colony—and costly enough to change a nation.

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Cover of The Rice Kingdom by E.G. Sturgis
AuthorE.G. Sturgis
PublisherTalk+tell
PublishedApril 28, 2026
FormatHardcover · 274 pages
ISBN979-8-2957-3057-3

On Madagascar, Princess Ranjita and her sworn protector, Sitaka, risk exile for a love their world will not permit. Betrayal, war, and the machinery of the transatlantic slave trade tear them apart and carry them across continents, each believing the other lost.

When fate reunites them in Charles Towne, they arrive with more than the will to survive. They carry sophisticated African knowledge of rice cultivation—knowledge the struggling Carolina colony has failed to master.

Their expertise helps unlock a new future for Carolina. It also feeds a system of wealth, exploitation, and suffering whose consequences will endure for generations. The Rice Kingdom is a sweeping historical epic about love, power, memory, and the African technology that helped shape America.

“A well-researched and panoramic tale.”

Damon Fordham, author and adjunct professor of history at The Citadel

Across three worlds

A story larger than the colony that remembers it.

01

Madagascar

Royal obligation, forbidden devotion, and a body of agricultural knowledge refined across generations.

02

The Atlantic

Pirates, trade, betrayal, forced migration, and the brutal machinery that turns human lives into cargo.

03

Charles Towne

A struggling colony discovers that the expertise it needs has arrived in the people it refuses to see as equals.

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Reader note: This novel includes depictions of enslavement, human trafficking, violence, and colonial exploitation.

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