In 1906 Philadelphia, Alma Mitchell’s carefully ordered life unravels with one shocking headline: her childhood friend, Harry Muskrat, is accused of murder. Once the brightest student at her father’s “savage-taming” boarding school, Harry—Asku—was stripped of his culture, his name, and his future. Now he faces death not just as a defendant, but as a man broken by the weight of assimilation.
Alma cannot reconcile the courageous boy she knew with the embittered man before her. Determined to save him, she convinces her lawyer husband to take the case. But defending Harry means exposing Alma’s long-buried secrets, the betrayals she has hidden even from her own heart.
As past and present collide, Alma must decide: will the truth destroy her, or finally set her free?
