Wayward Angel

From NYT bestselling author Patricia Rice: Kentucky, 1860s — A war-torn land. A hidden past. A fight for freedom and identity.

Raised in a pacifist Quaker community, Dora has lived a quiet life far removed from her origins as Lady Alexandra Theodora Beaumont, the daughter of a brutal British aristocrat. Her true identity is a closely guarded secret—buried even from Pace Nicholls, the fiery son of a local slaveholder and her closest childhood companion.

But Kentucky stands at a crossroads. As the nation fractures, Pace rejects his family’s legacy, frees the people his father once enslaved, and enlists in the Union army. Time and again, Dora risks her safety to aid his cause—tending the wounded, running supplies, and standing by his side through fire and loss.

Yet war changes everything. The boundaries of honor, desire, and duty blur. A single impulsive act shatters their bond, and Dora must confront both who she was born to be—and who she chooses to become.

Spanning years of personal and national turmoil, this sweeping saga traces two determined souls tested by war, haunted by the past, and struggling to find redemption in a divided land.