Carnton Books in Order

The Carnton novels center on Carnton, a real house in Franklin, Tennessee, that served as a Confederate field hospital during and after the Battle of Franklin. Alexander uses this single property and its surrounding town to explore the human cost of war, the long work of rebuilding, and the hard choices involved in telling the truth about the past.

The series opens with Christmas at Carnton, a novella set in 1863. Aletta Prescott is newly widowed, pregnant, and about to lose her home when she is dismissed from her factory job. Desperate, she applies to help with a Christmas auction hosted at Carnton to raise funds for soldiers’ families. There she meets Captain Jake Winston, a sharpshooter recovering from a head wound that threatens his sight and his identity. Forced into light duty at the event, Jake resents the assignment until he begins working alongside Aletta and the women of the local relief society. Their story unfolds against preparations for the holiday, the strain of war, and the slow budding of trust between two people who have both lost more than they expected.

With This Pledge moves to November 1864, when tens of thousands of soldiers converge on Franklin and Carnton is suddenly turned into a field hospital. Elizabeth "Lizzie" Clouston works there as a governess until wounded men fill every room. Overnight she is pulled into assisting the surgeon, holding lanterns and hands as lives hang in the balance. A dying soldier asks her to deliver a final message to his mother, while Captain Roland Ward Jones, a decorated marksman, begs her to fight any attempt to amputate his leg. Lizzie is already pledged to marry her childhood friend Towny, and she quietly opposes slavery, which puts her at odds with parts of the Southern cause. Her growing connection with Roland forces her to examine the promises she has made and the convictions she holds in the midst of overwhelming suffering.

In Colors of Truth, the war is over but its shadows linger. Irish immigrant Catriona O’Toole arrives in Franklin in 1866 with her younger sister, Nora, searching for the twin brother who was conscripted into the Confederate army and last wrote from this area. Wade Cunningham is a former Federal soldier now working for the young Secret Service, tasked with tracking down a sophisticated counterfeiting ring in the region. When he discovers that the money Catriona carries may be counterfeit, his duty collides with compassion. The novel ranges from Carnton’s grounds to town streets and hidden camps, threading together issues of loyalty, racial injustice, and the temptation to smooth over uncomfortable truths about the war.

Throughout the Carnton books, Alexander weaves in real people connected to the house and the nearby cemetery where many soldiers are buried. Each story can be read on its own, but reading them together gives a layered view of Franklin at war and in its uneasy peace. Expect battlefields and hospital wards, but also kitchens, parlors, and porches where ordinary people decide what kind of future they will build.