Of Roses, Blood & Stone

And what no one is prepared for is the truth that will overturn the legend entirely.

For nearly two centuries, visitors to Castillo de San Marcos have whispered the same romantic tale: two forbidden lovers, discovered entombed within the fortress walls. A tragic secret. A love that defied the world.

It is a story the town has polished and preserved.

It is not the whole truth.

In 1839, Dolores Martí arrives in St. Augustine as the young wife of Colonel García Martí, a man determined to force the Seminole people from their homeland in the name of empire. Within the coquina walls of the Castillo, prisoners suffer quietly while soldiers speak of order and progress. Dolores sees something else. She sees injustice. And she begins to act.

Her quiet rebellion, aided by Manuel Abela, her husband’s trusted aide, sets into motion a chain of events that will not end in romance, but in silence.

Nearly two centuries later, social media manager Janice Dalton escapes to St. Augustine with her historian boyfriend, Gabriel Martinez, hoping for rest after finishing her breakout novel. Instead, they uncover inconsistencies in the official archives and a sealed chamber hidden within the fortress walls.

What they find threatens to expose that the lovers’ legend was never a love story at all.

It was a cover.

As past and present collide, Janice and Gabe must decide what to do with a truth powerful enough to fracture a town’s identity. Because once the stone gives up its secrets, there is no rebuilding the myth.

Of Roses, Blood & Stone is a dual-timeline historical novel steeped in gothic suspense, exploring occupation, resistance, and the dangerous beauty of stories we choose to believe.