In any legal case, there are two trials. There is the public litigation, prosecuted by the state; and then there is the lingering argument for those people surrounding the defendant, the lives that will never be the same again, the sense of a world which has become a reflection of itself. Julie Gower's well-balanced life is about to be disrupted. She is a renowned musician who lives in London. She has everything that she wants: work that she enjoys, friends who are close to her, a lover who shares her passions and talent. Everything changes when a telephone call at dawn tells her that her father, a well-known academic of German origin, is being extradited to France from his home in Massachusetts, to stand trial for crimes against humanity. When witness after witness tells tales of incredible sadness and terror, Julie is forced to face, and come to grips with, not only the possibility of her father's guilt, but also the uneasy family dynamics which the trial brings into the open.