A projection in time and implication, personal, political and philosophical, of the killing of a man- the persons who were affected, the issues that became involved. When Steve Callahan, a brutal and ambition-ridden ranch superintendent is murdered in California in 1929, his death brings on the immediate trial of his wife, Germaine, who had hated him. Released on a verdict of not guilty, Germaine marries Larry Hellman, a young and liberal professor who in 1933- as a means of venting anti-semitism, is brought to trial for Callahan's death. The years passing to 1937 see the crime revived when Angelo Parenti, labor organizer, is arrested on the evidence of a German- Steuben. And it is only some time later, after acts of victimization and terrorization, that Steuben's undercover activities, both as killer and Nazi, are revealed... A scanning of the main stream of American thought and action, this merges considerable ideological content with the external drama of its story, achieves substance and realism if however without subtlety.