An Extraordinary Union

Reformed Rakes

In An Extraordinary Union, published in 2017, is the first in Cole’s The Loyal League series, both main characters are attempting to shape the politics of their time through espionage. Elle Burns is a freedwoman who has been living in New England with her parents after their enslaver died and his son freed them. She has an eidetic memory that has been treated somewhat as a party trick for most of her life, including by well-meaning, but thoughtless white abolitionists in the North. Elle joins the Loyal League, a network of spies aiming to aid the Union in the Civil War, to try and use her gift to help the cause. While Elle is working she meets Malcolm McCall, who has been sent by the Pinkertons to collaborate with Elle. He is also undercover—though he lives as a Rebel soldier, using his easy charm and good looks to ingratiate himself into Southern society. Cole takes a setting that has a history in romance, but one that ignores the people most subjugated by it and gives us a story that is part espionage thriller, part slow burn enemies to lovers.

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