Saltwater Juno: The Broken Hearth

The devastating first act of a seven-part historical epic, The Broken Hearth introduces the raw, percussive voice of Juno in a story of systemic cruelty, hidden bloodlines, and the fracturing of a family.

In 1823, inside the suffocating, twelve-foot cane walls of Louisiana’s Laura Plantation, survival means breathing in silence. For Juno, a fierce field hand, that silence is shattered when his sister Diana overhears a terrifying secret in the master’s study: Juno’s wife, Nan, is pregnant with a child belonging to the plantation master, Jacob Thibodeaux.

When the infant, Flora, is born with features that cannot be hidden, the plantation mistress, Charlotte Thibodeaux, enacts a cold and total vengeance. To erase the evidence of her husband's sin, she signs a ledger that dooms Juno’s entire household—selling Juno, Nan, her half-sister Bet, and their young son Cato to Noah Hébert, a ruthless slave trader notorious for tearing families apart.

As the black iron cage of Hébert's transport wagon rolls into the plantation gates, Juno throws his first desperate prayers at a silent heaven. Set against the backdrop of a scorched Louisiana winter, The Broken Hearth is a tense, claustrophobic historical drama that marks the beginning of Juno’s catastrophic descent down the river—and his ultimate awakening to a long, bloody road toward freedom.