A girl dies one late, rainy night a few feet from the back door of her home. The girl, Abeba, was born in Ethiopia. Her adoptive parents, Delvin and Betsy Harvey - conservative, white fundamentalist Christians - are charged with her murder. Royal, a Seattle criminal attorney in the last days of his long career, takes Betsy Harvey's case. David Guterson's first courtroom drama since Snow Falling on Cedars, it is his most compelling and heartfelt novel to date.