Sampson has spent a lifetime avoiding responsibility. A wealthy man with refined tastes and an uncanny talent for evasion, he's managed to dodge jury duty three times a year for decades, until the system finally catches up with him. Forced to serve on the jury of an embezzlement case, he expects boredom and inconvenience. What he finds is an elderly defendant, James W. Hildebrand, accused of stealing from a company he once led, and the defendant's granddaughter, Alexandra, whose presence unsettles something in Sampson he didn't know existed. As the trial unfolds, Sampson's carefully constructed worldview begins to fracture. The case that seemed straightforward reveals moral complexity he never anticipated, and his growing feelings for Alexandra force him to question everything he thought he knew about justice, class, and his own capacity for sympathy. McCutcheon crafts a quietly devastating portrait of a man forced to look at what he's spent his life avoiding: the weight of real judgment, both in court and in matters of the heart.
