This touching novel combines a look at family life and growing up in a small post-World War II southern town with a riveting courtroom drama. As in "To Kill a Mockingbird", the narrator is a young boy, 13-year-old Lee Hartwell, who sees his family and the world he loves changing dramatically when a woman he has known all his life is accused of a crime and Lee knows she is not guilty. As his lawyer father takes the case, the racial tensions of the town boil over, testing Lee's love for his father.