Louisiana, 1843: a German immigrant thinks she recognizes a young slave girl as the long-lost daughter of her German friend, but the girl has no memory of such a past, and her owner refuses to free her. In novelistic detail, historian John Bailey reconstructs the exotic sights, sounds, and smells of mid-nineteenth-century New Orleans, an "infernal motley crew" of cotton kings, decadent river workers, immigrants, and slaves. The dramatic trial offers an eye into the fascinating laws and customs surrounding slavery, immigration, and racial mixing, pitting a humble community of German immigrants against a hardened capitalist, as respected for his wealth and power as he is feared and distrusted, and his attorney, one of the brashest and most flamboyant lawyers of his time.