# A Shot in the Moonlight

Canonical: https://www.bookquiver.com/ben-montgomery/a-shot-in-the-moonlight/9780316535540

![A Shot in the Moonlight](https://quivercdn.com/covers/little-brown-us/ben-montgomery/a-shot-in-the-moonlight_978-03-1653-554-0.jpg?v=2026-05-10%2017%3A12%3A09)

- Book: [A Shot in the Moonlight](https://www.bookquiver.com/ben-montgomery/a-shot-in-the-moonlight) ([A Shot in the Moonlight.md](https://www.bookquiver.com/ben-montgomery/a-shot-in-the-moonlight.md))
- Authors: [Ben Montgomery](https://www.bookquiver.com/ben-montgomery)
- Publisher: little_brown_us
- ISBN: 978-03-1653-554-0
- Pages: 1
- Published: 2021-03-11
- Language: en_GB
- Binding: Hardcover

## Description

After moonrise on the cold night of January 21, 1897, a mob of twenty five white men gathered in a patch of woods near Big Road in southwestern Simpson County, Kentucky. Half carried rifles and shotguns, and a few tucked pistols in their pants. Their target? George Dinning, a freed slave who'd farmed peacefully in the area for 14 years, and had been wrongfully accused of stealing livestock from a neighboring farm. When the mob began firing through the doors and windows of Dinning's house, he fired back in self-defense, shooting and killing the son of a wealthy Kentucky family. So began one of the strangest legal episodes in American history -- one that ended with Dinning becoming the first black man in America to win damages after a wrongful murder conviction. Drawing on a wealth of never-before-published material, bestselling author Ben Montgomery resurrects this dramatic and largely forgotten story, and the unusual convergence of characters -- among them a Confederate war hero-turned-lawyer named Bennett H. Young, Kentucky governor William O'Connell Bradley, and George Dinning himself -- that allowed this thrilling but unlikely story of justice to unfold in a time and place where justice was all too rare.