It is 1942 North Florida, and six White men lynch a young Black boy for sending a Christmas card to a White girl....

Trey Binyon, the only White reporter for a Black Chicago newspaper, is on his way to Tampa to cover a story. At the Suwanee River, he watches from hiding as a White mob hangs Joshua Bulow, a 15-year-old Black boy, from a rusting bridge—with his helpless father bound and watching. The metallic taste of fear prevents Trey from intervening, and that becomes for him an enduring shame. Trey joins the Army and after WW II returns to Jim-Crow Florida to cover the story of Joshua’s lynching—uncertain whether he is pursuing a story, justice, revenge, or atonement.

In the town of Mission Springs, he encounters a sheriff obsessed with maintaining order, his brutal deputy, and people who will kill to protect old secrets and each other. A member of Joshua’s 1942 lynch mob is found hanged, and Joshua’s older brother, Caleb, is accused of the crime. The Klan burns a small Black community partially to the ground. To defend Caleb, Trey and Ellie MacDowell, owner of the local weekly newspaper, enlist an aging, White trial lawyer from Georgia and a young Black lawyer from Florida. In a suspense filled trial, revelation after revelation lead to a climax where things are not always as they seem.