Colors of Truth (The Carnton Series)
Tennessee, 1866. With funds sent by her brother, Ryan, and her seven-year-old sister in tow, Catriona O’Toole journeys from Ireland to Franklin, Tennessee to find Ryan and reunite their family. But this is the postwar South, and Franklin, site of the deadliest battle of the Civil War less than two years previous, is the hotbed of a counterfeiting ring. Enter Wade Cunningham, a former Federal Army officer and present United States Secret Service agent assigned to expose the conmen.
Catriona and Wade meet at Carnton Plantation, where she means to confront its owner, John McGavock, about land she believes the McGavocks stole from her family years ago. Perhaps, too, McGavock knows Ryan’s whereabouts; a conscripted Confederate soldier dispatched to Franklin, Ryan had planned to ask McGavock about the theft. Meanwhile, in deep undercover as a former Confederate soldier, Wade has come for employment as Carnton’s overseer to investigate McGavock, whose name has surfaced in connection with the fake bills.
This is a narrative whose rich prose speaks eloquently of people coming together despite passionately opposing beliefs. Although attracted to Wade, Catriona believes he fought for the South, and she abhors slavery. Equally drawn to her, Wade questions her business with John McGavock, a former slave owner who represents everything Wade fought a war to destroy.
What is truth, if not elusive? The McGavock family offers Irish immigrant Catriona shelter at a time when she is suddenly penniless in a foreign—and sometimes hostile—land. Despite his contempt for John McGavock, Wade finds him a compassionate man, one who wants the country to put dividedness behind it and move forward as one. In the end, this insightful and entertaining second entry in the author’s popular Carnton series goes straight to the heart: we must never ignore history or pretend it didn’t happen, lest we make the same mistakes again.
