After the death of her literary rival in a freak accident, author June Hayward steals her just-finished masterpiece, sending it to her agent as her own work, but as emerging evidence threatens her success, she discovers how far she'll go to keep what she thinks she deserves.

"The New York Times bestselling author of The Girl Who Knew Too Much sweeps readers back to 1930s California--where the most dazzling of illusions can't hide the darkest secrets... After escaping from a private sanitarium, Adelaide Blake arrives in Burning Cove, California, desperate to start over. Working at an herbal tea shop puts her on the radar of those who frequent the seaside resort town: Hollywood movers and shakers always in need of hangover...

Cassie Kendrick runs away from an arranged marriage by disguising herself as a man and enlisting in the Union Army, and on the battlefields of the Civil War she meets photographer Gabriel Avery.

Melissa James has been looking over her shoulder for most of her life, but one phone call forces her to leave behind her precious husband and home in Connecticut, on the run from her past once again, and looking for sanctuary in the home of a Mennonite woman.

Recounts the parallel stories of two aged men heralded throughout the mid-twentieth century as Civil War veterans, revealing how only one of them had actually served while the other had perpetrated a fraudulent past.