He was a Vietnam veteran, politically and socially active with a successful career in airline aviation. To outsiders, Captain Timothy McDonald would seem like the last person to fall in love with a convicted felon. But upon meeting Teresa Deion Harris, McDonald soon earned a unique distinction, becoming the first man to marry an imprisoned woman serving life without parole.

Abused, oppressed, and trapped in a cycle of poverty in the rural South, Harris had lived a life that was the opposite of McDonald's. But it wasn't long before McDonald recognized the resemblance between her...