A Kiss in the Ashes: Where Love Defied the Gallows

Georgia, 1865. The war is over, but its shadows still linger.

Abigale McKinley has already buried too much—her brother lost to the battlefield, her family struggling to survive on a ravaged farm, and her heart worn thin by grief. The last thing she expects is a stranger to ride into her life carrying devastating news…and a fragile spark of hope.

Joseph Brennan was a Union soldier who refused to fire on men who didn’t know the war had ended. Branded a deserter for choosing mercy over murder, he carries scars no battlefield ever healed—and a secret that could cost him his life.

When fate brings Joseph into Abigale’s world, the connection between them is immediate, dangerous, and undeniable.

But an unrelenting lieutenant is hunting Joseph with orders to see him hang. As the danger closes in and Abigale’s family is taken prisoner, she must choose between fear and the fierce love she never expected to find. With the gallows waiting at dawn, an entire town faces a choice of its own: bow to injustice or stand together for a man who risked everything to do what was right.

In the ashes of war, where hope seems impossible and love itself is dangerous, one kiss will challenge death.

A Kiss in the Ashes: Where Love Defied the Gallows is a sweeping post–Civil War historical romance about courage, sacrifice, redemption, and a love bold enough to defy the noose.