This debut novel shines a light on the dark subject of infanticide when a successful female criminal defense lawyer is ordered to defend a seventeen-year-old minister’s daughter charged with murder in the drowning death of her newborn child.
In Defense of Good Women is the story of Victoria Stephens, a successful, hard-nosed criminal defense attorney appointed by the court to represent a seventeen-year-old minister’s daughter charged with murder in the drowning death of her newborn child. Victoria faces a hostile community, a salivating press, an uncooperative client, but most of all, a nagging intuition that she should not be handling this case. Forced to delve into the psychology of neonaticide as she searches for a defense, Victoria discovers a link between this case and her own past which, once uncovered, leads her beyond the boundaries of not just her profession, but the law.