After her series of articles is awarded three Pulitzer Prizes, investigative reporter Kate Townsend is haunted by the knowledge that her new-found fame has been purchased at too high a price. She is certain that McCall, an internationally acclaimed cardiologist, researcher, and a 2002 nominee for the Nobel Prize for Medicine, is not guilty. Texas governor Greg Bell hires former homicide detective and criminal defense attorney Rich Jansen to fix the escalating problems at the Huntsville Prisons recently inflamed by a lawsuit against infamous inmate Dr. Lindsey McCall. When Jansen's skills quickly result in the resignation of an incompetent prison medical director, he realizes that this strange saga is just beginning. Mark Twain wrote that forgiveness was the fragrance shed by a violet upon the heel of the boot that has crushed it. This medical mystery weaves together the lives of two sisters, Lindsey and Paula, with those of strangers as each copes with loss, betrayal, jealousy, and the exquisitely painful journey to forgiveness.