How much does justice weigh? Sam Woodard has carried a burden since birth: poverty and being an African American growing up in the Jim Crow South during the 1940s. The scales of justice have weighed in, it’s 2022, and Sam is walking a green mile on death row, awaiting his execution for a crime Ginny Sosebee, a white Southern journalist, believes he didn’t commit.

However, Ginny carries a different kind of burden: guilt over her brother Hack's accident and the problems that come from family dysfunction of secrets, lies, and unspoken truths. The story winds around the true story of Isaac Woodard, a decorated World War II hero, whose eyes are gouged out by white police officers as punishment for requesting to use the restroom while on a bus on his way home from World War II.

Sam is Isaac’s fictional brother who recounts Isaac’s blinding, which caused national outrage and prompted desegregation of the U. S.

military and all schools across the Deep South. Despite being kidnapped and receiving death threats from those who don’t want Sam’s release from prison, Ginny continues her investigative reporting, determined to prove Sam’s innocence, and uncovers a can of worms that opens from the inside out.

The facts lay bare the ugly reality of racial discrimination and abuse inflicted by white supremacists, giving rise to the reason behind the dark turns Sam and his family have taken. .