"Someone has to be first." So says Kate Warne to Allen Pinkerton, the world's most famous private investigator, when she applies to be his first female agent in 1856. Widowed young without a penny to her name, Kate is desperate for work, and Pinkerton can't deny the reality that "women can go places men are not welcome." Thus begins Kate's career in deception, hunting thieves, money launderers, even murderers, all while endeavoring to earn the respect of her male coworkers. It's a tough, lonely job, for which Kate proves to have an impressive talent…talent that will be put to the test when the Pinkertons are hired by President Abraham Lincoln to serve as Union spies. Based loosely on the life of real-life Pinkerton agent Kate Warne, this quick-reading novel is a straightforward imagining of an indomitable woman who lived a most unusual life.