The inspiration behind A Lesson Before Dying meets the best of John Grisham, as a young Cajun lawyer fights to save a black teenager from the electric chair. On May 3, 1946, a seventeen-year-old boy was scheduled to die by the electric chair inside of a tiny red brick jail in picturesque St. Martinville, Louisiana. Young Willie Francis had been charged with the murder of a local pharmacist. The electric chair--three hundred pounds of oak and metal-- had been dubbed "Gruesome Gertie" and was moved from one jailhouse to another throughout the state of Louisiana. The switch would be thrown at 12:08 P.M., but Willie Francis did not die. Miraculously, having survived this less than cordial encounter with death, Willie was soon informed that the state would try to kill him again in six days.

Letters began pouring into St. Martinville from across the country--Americans of all colors and classes were transfixed by the fate of this young man. Had he been saved from death from the hand of the Almighty? Could Louisiana really execute someone twice? Was the boy innocent--the victim of secrets and lies told by powerful whites in the cursed town of St. Martinville? Into the fray stepped a Cajun lawyer just returned from WWII, Bertrand DeBlanc, who would take on Willie's case--in the face of overwhelming local resistance. DeBlanc would argue the case all the way from the Bayou to the U.S. Supreme Court in an attempt to save one boy's life and the conscience of a nation.

In deciding Willie's fate the courts and the country would be forced to ask questions about capital punishment that remain unresolved today.