Synopsis

“New to that country, caught up in my own survival, I did not understand the scope or nature of the War of the Rebellion, only that it was not ours, my brother’s and mine, to fight. I could not have imagined that the war would come to the very shores of Grindstone, with such treachery and brutality that I still wake at night with a pounding heart.”

Leaving Ireland in the devastating aftermath of the Famine, Anya McGregor finds refuge in an island realm far from the violence of the Civil War, only to discover that she cannot escape its dark undercurrents. For Jonathon Douglas, a Confederate spy, the islands also provide temporary sanctuary, but soon become as dangerous as the battlefront.  Believing him a traitor, his compatriots have vowed to follow him to the ends of the earth.  Irresistibly drawn to each other, Anya and Jonathon are pulled into a web of espionage that threatens to destroy them both. Lyrical and profoundly moving, Grindstone is historical fiction at its best, a haunting story that inspires even as it shapes one’s understanding of the most violent period in American history.