Plucky young attorney Sarah Woolson flouts proper Victorian notions of feminine behavior in this nineteenth-century answer to Legally Blonde. Though her own law firm barely tolerates her, and her mother begs her to settle down, Sarah sets out to prove herself in her first criminal trial.

When a woman whose husband has died in a sweatshop fire asks for Sarah's help in finding the culprit, she insists on taking the case against her boss' wishes. Even more scandalously, when several people affiliated with a charity hospital die within a few days of each other, Sarah puts herself in the middle of the puzzle, racing against time to find the killer and defending a Chinese man accused of murder. Imagine, a woman lawyer in court!