LeRoy Kinley grew up in a North Carolina mill village during the Great Depression. The hard times led him to make bad choices, and he was sentenced to a chain gang. In the 1930s, chain gangs were free labor to build our country's roads, but a brutal form of punishment often too harsh for petty crimes.


He escaped, changed his name, and became a fugitive.


After he died, his daughters learned of the secret their father thought he took to his grave. His story unfolded as a portrait of America during a time of great change. Meticulously researched and masterfully woven, the biography of Becoming Royal is a true story of redemption set against the backdrop of poverty in a still-changing South.