Exhausted by overwork, the young barrister Philip Lefrank travels to Morwick Farm in America seeking rest, only to confront troubling doubts about the past execution of John Jago, whose conviction for murder may have been a grave miscarriage of justice. Within the farm and the surrounding community, silence and unease linger over the case, while Lefrank’s growing acquaintance with the spirited Naomi Colebrook complicates his emotional and moral reflections. As he uncovers inconsistencies in testimony and hidden motives, he begins to question how readily an irreversible sentence of death was imposed. The novel ultimately explores the restoration of a tarnished name and the fragile boundary between legal authority and true justice.
