Nail Chism was, as his role of shepherd suggests, a protector of the innocent, a quiet and compassionate man, strong and gentle. Yet, when he enters the death chamber for the first time, he wears around his neck a blade of a table knife he has sharpened on his cell floor to use to kill as many people as he can before they kill him. This change began when Nail was tried and convicted for a crime he did not commit, the rape of the thirteen-year-old Stay More girl, Dorinda Whitter. Nail was targeted for this frame-up when he opposed the actions of his brother-inlaw, Newton County's chief administrator and a member of "the courthouse gang" that ran an illegal liquor business. The brutality of prison life intensified the deadening of Nail's compassion.

Although Viridis grew up in an economic environment very different from that of Nail, she...