When beautiful and idealistic law student Judy Alexander signs up for the Exoneration Clinic at a financially challenged law school in mid-town Manhattan, she has hopes of investigating and righting wrongful convictions. Instead, she is drawn into a media-hyped case in Texas in which a man accused of murder declines all legal assistance and offers to plead guilty--but only in exchange for being sentenced to death. Convinced of his innocence, Judy follows leads which lead first to Catalina Island off the coast of California, and then inexorably to a nineteen year old cold case in which a young girl mysteriously disappeared without a trace while visiting the iconic French landmark of Mont St. Michel, an ancient medieval monastery atop an isolated island which was occupied by a contingent of Nazi soldiers during World War II.