Death has deep roots.

The woman was young, French, and on trial for murdering a man said to be her ex-lover and the father of her dead child: an English major who had been one of the great heroes of the French Underground Resistance during the war. Mr. Macrea, hired to be her attorney on the first day of the trial, must find a way to prove her innocence in only one week. And he must dig deeply into the past to prove it.