Based on a true story, in April 1912 in Hampton, Virginia, Charles Mears, a white, eighteen-year-old reporter, covers his first murder case. It is the trial of an uneducated African American girl named Virginia Christian who stands accused of killing her white employer. Virginia died in the electric chair, the only female juvenile executed in Virginia history. The book tells the story of the trial and its aftermath using actual court records, letters, newspaper stories, and personal accounts.
