It's 1946 and Regina Robichard is the first woman to be hired by Thurgood Marshall at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. One day, Regina comes across a letter from M. P. Calhoun, the most famous yet reclusive author in the country. As a child Regina was captivated by Calhoun's The Secret of Magic, a novel in which white and black children played together in a magical forest. The book was a sensation. It was banned more than any other book in the South. It appeared on the cover of Time magazine. And then M. P. Calhoun vanished.

Calhoun asks Thurgood Marshall to investigate the murder of Joe Howard Wilson, a decorated black lieutenant who had been on his way back to his small Mississippi town, worn and weary from World War II combat. Joe Howard had called his daddy from the Alabama border, telling him he would be home in two hours' time. But Joe Howard never arrived . . . and two weeks later his murdered body was found.

Despite his better judgment, Thurgood gives Regina permission to investigate the case. But down in Mississippi, she finds that nothing in the small town of Revere is as it seems, and she must navigate the muddy waters of racism and town secrets as she tries the impossible-to get justice for a black man in the deep South.