After Honor Gillette is visited by Lee Coburn, a suspected murderer seeking a valuable object that Honor's late husband left behind, they find themselves running from the FBI and untangling a web of corruption and depravity.

Ruby Bozarth, a newcomer to Rosedale, Mississippi, is also fresh to the Mississippi Bar--and to the docket of Circuit Judge Baylor, who taps Ruby as defense counsel in a racially charged felony. The murder of a woman from one of the town's oldest families has Rosedale's upper crust howling for blood, and the prosecutor is counting on Ruby's inexperience to help him deliver a swift conviction. Ruby's client is a college football star who has returned...