The Evolution of Annabel Craig: A Novel

"Dayton, Tennessee. 1925. It is in this sleepy mountain town where Annabel, a devout woman, falls in love with George Craig, a cosmopolitan defense attorney. Annabel's outlook on everything from life to love to the law is shaped by her faith; George sees the law something to bend to his will, and sees a world shaped by science and reason alone. By the end of the year, their marriage, and the private battle waged within it, will come up against the true battlefield that Dayton is destined to become when John Scopes, a local teacher, is arrested for teaching Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. The trial is a spectacle unlike anything Dayton has seen before. William Jennings Bryan--a famous, pious politician--joins the prosecution, pitting himself and his beliefs against the ruthless defense attorney Clarence Darrow. Journalists descend in a frenzy, thrusting the town and its denizens into the national spotlight. It is in this light that the cracks in Annabel's marriage to a fickle yet cunning man--along with her most steadfast beliefs--emerge. As the ongoing trial divides neighbor against neighbor, so too, does it divide the Craigs in unexpected ways. But it is in these conflicts--one waged in newspaper headlines, and another behind closed doors--that Annabel will truly begin to wonder, for the first time in her life, for herself and herself alone, and discover that the path to our greatest evolution of all, is self-discovery"--