Meet Marissa Erinson

Marissa Erinson grew up in rural South Carolina in the era before Prohibition. In her world, people of every variety interacted and enjoyed a relatively peaceful society. Sure, she had heard of the racial strains that had existed in her parents' generation - and still existed outside her insular community - but she had never really encountered them.

Until at 18 years old, Marissa - the shyest of shy girls - took a risk and moved to big-city St. Louis to work in the bookstore at the University of Washington...just in time for the explosion of crime that erupted around the restriction of the alcohol trade.

Almost immediately, she finds out that understanding cultural tensions isn't the same thing as living among them. Marissa doesn't fit in with the students on campus, and she doesn't exactly know how else to find friends, so she ventures into one of the surrounding neighborhoods in search of community.

She stumbles on a fun and interesting couple, Leonard and his fiancée Doris, and soon enters their welcoming world. Between the neighborhood five-and-dime and the local jazz club, she encounters an entire world of fascinating and relatable people. Only as her social group increases to include some students as well does she realize that Prohibition St. Louis doesn't hold the same racial tolerance as her close-knit community back home. The stories she hears from Leonard and Doris break her heart, though she can offer no easy solutions beyond a listening ear.

When the opportunity arises, she determines to share the tales with the students she has met - Mario Garner and Barbara Crenshaw - in hopes of seeking some way to help her new friends.

Unfortunately, Barbara - her nearest connection to the school - holds a more activist bent than Marissa, and Barbara's attempts to call people to account place Marissa in the crosshairs of St. Louis rumrunners.

What Marissa had known about herself before she arrived in St. Louis was that she generally liked people, irrespective of what they looked like or where they came from. What she hadn't known about herself was that, when her friends stood in danger, she could find unexpected bravery to stand in their defense.

She also hadn't known that standing in the gap for the innocent would place a target squarely on her own back instead.