Professor Karen Pelletier is up for tenure in the English department at New England’s exclusive Enfield College. Then her rival for the one tenured spot, Professor Joseph Lone Wolf, whose ethnicity gives him minority-preference status, is found dead. Karen, first on the list of suspects, is harassed by a homicide cop with a grudge against Karen’s boyfriend, Lieutenant Charlie Piotrowski. Meanwhile, political passions rage on campus, and two of Karen’s favorite students—Khalida Ahmed, a hijab-wearing Muslim, and Hank Brody, a coal-miner’s son on full scholarship—are caught up in the furor.

Without the presence of her beloved Charlie, now serving in Iraq, will Karen be able to survive the investigation, protect her students, and find a permanent niche in the world of academia? And what if the killer feels the need to strike again?

In December 1941, America is reeling from the brutal attack on Pearl Harbor. Both patriotism and paranoia grip New York as the city frantically mobilizes for war. Nurse Louise Hunter is outraged when the FBI, in a midnight sweep of prominent Japanese residents, storms in to arrest her patient’s wife. The desperately ill Professor Oakley is married to artist Masako Fumi. The nurse vows to help the professor free Masako. But when the murdered body of Masako’s art dealer is discovered in the gallery where he’d been closing down her controversial show, Masako’s troubles multiply. Homicide detective Michael McKenna doubts her guilt, but an ambitious government man schemes to lever the homicide and ensuing espionage accusations into a political cause célèbre.

Struggling to focus on one man’s murder while America plunges into a worldwide war, Louise and McKenna defy both racism and ham-fisted government agents in order to expose the real killer.