They thought she was a man in disguise. There have been such incidents. Grace Marks was imprisoned in 1843 for almost 30 years as an accomplice to the murder of her employer Thomas Kinnear and his mistress, the housekeeper Nancy. Her guilt was never incontrovertibly established. Grace's sentence of death is commuted to life imprisonment.
Grace becomes fair game for doctors who wish to analyze good and evil in women.
Two years later the body of Richard E. Griffen, a prominent industrialist, is found dead. And in 1975 Aimee Griffen dies of a broken neck. The only person who knows the circumstances behind these deaths is Iris Chase Griffen, Laura's elder sister, Richard's wife, Aimee's mother. It deals with an affair between a wealthy young woman and her lover, a radical on the run for. What isn't there has a presence, like the absence of light.