When preachers in a rural Georgia town launch a campaign to ban selected novels from the high school curriculum and post the Ten Commandments in every classroom, only one person stands up to them: English teacher Anne Brady, an "outsider" from Atlanta who opposes censorship and champions the separation of Church and State. Refusing to "go along to get along," she finds herself a social outcast locked in a battle to save her job and reputation. For help, she turns to another outsider, lawyer Eugene Shapiro, who as the county's only Jewish attorney knows all too well what his client is up against. By the time Anne's case spills into court from a heated school-board meeting, the mood of the county points toward a legal lynching - or worse, as some of the more zealous defenders of the faith have drifted beyond the reach of law or reason. This novel is a powerful reminder that not all religious fanatics live in the Middle East. America has its own home-grown variety.