When the darkest imaginable shadow fell on the free world, it took a little girl to stand up and light the torch. A sixteen-year-old girl, Betty Robinson, is perpetually late. She is late for school and late for the Chicago-bound train that would take her out of her small town of Riverdale, Illinois early one morning in 1927. The townspeople knew she might still catch the train, because in a time when girls played with dolls, this wiry-framed girl was different. She could run. Riding on the same train was Charles Price, a man who habitually checks his pocket watch. He's going to Chicago as...

Bruno Richard Hauptmann, a German carpenter, stood trial alone for the tragic kidnapping and death of the world's most celebrated baby, the heir to Charles Lindbergh's aviation glory. The body of Charles, Jr. was cremated and his ashes were scattered from an urn by his father flying alone a second time over the Atlantic. Yet despite the retelling of police errors and the ensuing murder trial led by a defense attorney that was suffering from incurable syphilis, the court case seems to bring no finality. As retold here through the eyes of one of America's wealthiest socialites, Evelyn McLean,...