A washed-up actor-turned-paralegal steals a cache of internal tobacco company documents. An unreconstructed Southerner, who once burned a cross in a neighbor's yard, takes a poor black man's case against a cigarette maker to court, prays at his bedside, and weeps at his grave. A navy pilot who was nearly ordered to drop nuclear weapons on Prague returns to become a millionaire asbestos attorney. A rock-and-roll-singing, twenty-seven-year-old district attorney brings down one of the most powerful political figures in Mississippi and goes on to become the state's attorney general.