Kitty's Conquest

A train cuts through the Reconstruction-era South, carrying Mr. Brandon, a lawyer fleeing New Orleans, into a world where the Civil War's wounds have not healed. He spots Kitty Carrington and is captivated, but beneath her beauty lies a woman shaped by loss and rage. Her family suffered at Yankee hands, and she carries that hatred like a weapon. When their train is halted by a robbery linked to the Ku-Klux Klan, the delicate fiction of polite society collapses. Kitty's animosity toward all things Northern collides with Lieutenant Amory, a Union officer also aboard, forcing a confrontation that cuts deeper than any pistol shot. What unfolds is a story of survival, prejudice, and the terrible question of whether love can bloom between enemies who have every reason to despise each other. King captures a South suspended between the old world and the new, where old grievances fester alongside new dangers.