"Counsel, your time has expired," the presiding justice said. He was very nearly right. For fifty-seven seconds, I died.

Recuperating from a heart attack, Rios learns with astonishment that his estranged sister had an illegitimate daughter when she was young, and that the girl is grown now, with a son of her own, and an abusive husband. When the man is shot dead, and the bruised wife confesses, Rios immediately assumes it to be a battered wife's self-defense. But gradually small discrepancies emerge, and before long Rios finds himself on the path to a much darker, more complex truth ...a truth that will lead him to some life-altering events of his own.