The musical concerns the 1913 trial of Jewish factory manager Leo Frank who was accused of raping and murdering a 13 year old employee, Mary Phagan. The trial, sensationalized by the media, aroused anti-Semitic tensions in Atlanta and the state of Georgia. When Frank's sentence was commuted due to possible problems with the trial and he was transferred to a prison in Milledgeville, Georgia, a lynching party broke him out of the prison. Frank was taken to Phagan's hometown of Marietta, Georgia, and he was hanged.
The emotional backbone of the show is how Leo and his wife, Lucille, discover a deep love for each other out of what was essentially an arranged marriage. A listener can hear their relationship shift from cold to warm in songs like "Leo at Work/What am I Waiting For?," "You Don't Know This Man," and, in Act II, "Do it Alone," and "All the Wasted Time".
The show also doesn't shy away from making it clear that the likely killer was the African-American drifter Jim Conley, though the real villains of the piece are prosecutor Hugh Dorsey and rabid publisher Tom Watson.
