Sans Rancune

In the fall of 1994, a teacher at Chicago's run-down Steinmetz High conspires with the school's academic decathlon team to cheat on an academic competition.

Nathan Flomm, in order to avoid the humiliation of having missed out on a hugely successful business, assumes a new identity on Martha's Vineyard. He plots revenge when his former business partner moves to the same town.

Two great lawyers argue the case for and against a science teacher accused of the crime of teaching evolution.

Two separate stories mesh - in the first, a young music teacher, Maggie Andrews, begins dying of a heart condition and her son Nathan tries to get a pair of Christmas shoes for her before she dies. In the second, lawyer Robert Layton and his wife Kate are slowly drifting apart and the matter comes to a head during Christmas when Kate takes over for Maggie for the school choir.