The year is 2000. America is changing, swept up in a tide of fundamentalism that is overwhelming the world. Suicide cults and paranoid militias are on the rise, mobs of hooded men drive young women from the streets, and a new plague is taking root around the world, threatening the future of humanity. The right-wing American Alliance is marshaling its forces to close an iron grip on the United States, grooming swaggering prosecutor Jake Jagger as an eventual presidential candidate.

Jagger's first stepping-stone to power is a fifteen-year-old girl, Lolly Ashaler. Terrified and uncomprehending, the illiterate Lolly left her newborn baby in a Dumpster - and Jagger wants to see her condemned to death for her crime.

1. Carolyn Crespin has retired from her law practice, ready to devote herself to family and farm life. The last person she wants to face in a courtroom again is Jagger, who once dealt her a devastating defeat. But she can't say no to this case. She begins to gather her own forces, the five women whose friendship has sustained her in the decades since they met at college - and the oddly present spirit of their group's one missing member, the ever-mysterious Sophy, who committed suicide three years ago.

As the case progresses, Carolyn begins to understand just how far Jagger is willing to go to win. And on her own side, the questions are mounting: Is Sophy truly dead? And is her spirit guiding Carolyn and her friends to something benevolent, or demonic? Is the plague touching their lives really an illness... or a cure?