Luisa 'Lu' Brant is the newly elected - and first female - state's attorney of Howard County Maryland a job in which her revered father famously served. Fiercely ambitious she sees an opportunity to make her name by trying a mentally disturbed drifter accused of beating a woman to death in her home. As Lu prepares for the trial the case dredges up painful memories reminding her small but tight-knit family of the night when her brother AJ saved his best friend at the cost of another man's life. Only 18 AJ was cleared by a grand jury. Propelled into the past Lu realises that even if she could learn the whole truth she probably wouldn't want to.