On August 31, 1940, a beautiful warm summer night, a night when no one could have imagined that something so evil could happen, an innocent young White girl, barely fifteen, named Claudine Williams, was murdered under the White Bridge, in a small Southern town of Pixley, by Olin Chilton, a fourteen-year-old Negro boy who was immediately arrested, convicted, and forgotten until fourteen years later when Jake Ross, a Yankee attorney, comes to town and lets it be known that he is there to prove that the Negro boy was innocent.
Rachael McAllister, the twenty-four-year-old young woman who is head librarian and town historian, is one of the first to encounter Mr. Ross when he comes to see her to request her permission to look at the town's records. Rachael knows nothing of his purpose, and since she believes that the books and the information in the library are for everyone--and the only requirement is that you follow the rules, she allows him unrestricted access.
In the time of Jim Crow, the Southern town of Pixley is not about to let this Yankee attorney destroy their past and disparage their integrity without a fight, and a can of worms is opened, which ultimately involves the whole town.