A political thriller raising questions about abortion politics, the gun culture in America, and the degree to which the press should expose the private lives of political leaders.
President Kerry Kilcannon and his fiancee, television journalist Lara Costello, have at last decided to marry. But their wedding is followed by a massacre of innocents in a lethal burst of gunfire, challenging their marriage and his presidency in ways so shattering and indelibly personal that Kilcannon vows to eradicate gun violence and crush the most powerful lobby in Washington-the Sons of the Second Amendment (SSA).
When Alabama society lawyer Adam Shaw finds the body of a family friend who has been brutally killed, he battles to clear her husband of the charge of murder. But it becomes clear that Lydia's death is inextricably linked to Shaw's own past and future.
A family-revenge story and courtroom drama. A young man is brutally murdered and his distraught girlfriend is charged and brought to trial. Her aunt, about to take up a top job in the US Court of Appeals, decides to defend her, but it is the girl's first contact with her family for 20 years.
The McCarrans and the Gallaghers, two military families, have been close for decades, ever since Anthony McCarran - now one of the army's most distinguished generals - became best friends with Jack Gallagher, a fellow West Pointer who was later killed in Vietnam. Now a new generation of soldiers faces combat, and Lt. Brian McCarran, the general's son, has returned from a harrowing tour in Iraq.