The Laws of Our Fathers opens with a spectacular drive-by shooting in one of Kindle County's most notorious drug-plagued housing projects. The victim is an aging white woman who has never been seen there before; within days her son, Nile Eddgar, a probation officer, is charged in connection with the crime.

Nile's trial is presided over - and narrated by - Judge Sonia "Sonny" Klonsky, whom Turow's fans will remember from his second novel, The Burden of Proof. It brings together a vivid cast of characters from Sonny's student years during the turbulent sixties, among them Nile's father, Loyell Eddgar, once a leading campus revolutionary, and Sonny's old boyfriend Seth Weissman, who is now a renowned journalist.

All have been permanently marked by the heady iconoclasm of their youth; some carry terrible secrets that come to bear on the case at hand in unforeseeable and explosive ways.