Darleen Swannoa Union already knows how isolating wealth and privilege can be. As the only grandchild of Swan Hardigree Samples, the elegant and autocratic president of the Hardigree Marble Company and the chief employer in the town of Burnt Stand, NC, Darleen has spent her entire life confined to the family's pink marble mansion and its surrounding estate. Her only friend is Matilda, the daughter of Swan's assistant until Eli Wade comes back to town.
He is a damned good cop -- a burned-out homicide detective wrapped around a Smith & Wesson .38 and a vodka bottle. She is his partner -- twice divorced, nursing a grudge against men, obsessed by the awful temptation of love. Joseph Wambaugh, the tough ex-cop who writes the hard-hitting best sellers -- a master storyteller whose characters are as powerful and as passionate as his plots.
1941. Loyal Ledford works the swing shift tending furnace at the Mann Glass factory in Huntington, West Virginia. He courts Rachel, the boss's daughter, a company nurse with spike-straight posture and coal-black hair. But when Pearl Harbor is attacked, Ledford, like so many young men of his time, sets his life on a new course.
