Stephen Travis is a prison chaplain who is approached by inmates with evidence of criminality by the prison's staff-which has a direct effect on the inmates and their families. The problem is, no one in the "chain of command" within the system wants to know about the wrongdoing. Travis finds himself not only being reprimanded for reporting the crimes to his superiors, but ultimately having to go outside the system in order to see justice done. He finds support in two colleagues, as well as in the woman with whom he is romantically involved. But the search for justice also becomes a matter of life and death.

Jack Lawson grew up in North Carolina. As an ordained minister he worked as a prison chaplain in North Carolina and Ohio, and later served as a parish minister in the US and the United Kingdom. After earning a Ph.D. in Hebrew Bible, he taught both ministerial candidates and lay people in the English counties of Kent and Norfolk. After leaving parish ministry in 1997, Jack worked for the Countryside Agency, focusing on rural economic regeneration and managing a European Social Fund grant between Kent and Nord-Pas-de-Calais. In the process he developed an intense love of France and the French people. Later, Jack spent more than 12 years as training and development officer for the Methodist Church in East Anglia. Jack is married to Chris, a former mental health specialist who worked with children and families in the UK. They reside in Lower Normandy, France.