Ellie feels this is a good foundation for an insanity plea. He’s able to help Katie access her memories and realize that she had a baby, but Katie still insists she did not harm her child. Ellie calls in her friend Coop, an ex-boyfriend and psychiatrist to assess Katie for an insanity plea. Katie, meanwhile, is struggling with her memory of the night the baby was born, insisting to everyone who asks that she never even had a baby. She especially feels conflict with Katie’s strict father, Aaron, who owns the farm. Ellie is not happy about this situation, wanting nothing to do with the Amish lifestyle. This means that Ellie will have to stay at the Fisher family’s farm until the trial as a condition of Katie’s bail. Ellie is able to convince the judge to grant Katie bail at the pre-trial hearing, but the judge orders close supervision. However, Leda begs her for her help, and Ellie soon winds up enmeshed in Katie’s case. At first, Ellie refuses to get involved, not wanting to become involved in yet another criminal case.

She decides to visit her aunt Leda in the country, but when she arrives, she’s told that a cousin she never met has been accused of murder. She’s also having problems in her relationship and decides to leave town for a while to try to figure out where she wants her life to go. However, the emotional toll of defending clearly guilty clients is getting to her, making her feel sick.

Meanwhile, attorney Ellie Hathaway has just won the biggest case of her life. After being treated at the hospital, Katie is arrested for murder. When Katie, the teenage daughter of the farmer, is found to be suffering from the aftereffects of birth, the detective suspects murder. At first, it seems to be an accidental death, but the detective quickly finds inconsistencies in the statements from the family living on the farm. A baby boy is found dead in the barn of an Amish dairy farm. It was adapted into a 2004 Lifetime television movie starring Mariska Hargitay as Ellie and Alison Pill as Katie. Serving as an in-depth exploration of the Amish culture and its interaction with the American justice system, and exploring themes of devotion, religious conflict, and motherhood, Plain Truth received mixed, but overall positive, reviews from critics, including being named Book of the Week from People magazine. The bail conditions require Ellie to remain on the farm with Katie for the duration of the trial, forcing Ellie to return to the Amish society that she left behind long ago. As Katie’s trial is set, her distant relative Ellie Hathaway steps in as her defense attorney. It is about an eighteen-year-old Amish girl, Katie Fisher, who is charged with the murder of her newborn son. American author Jodi Picoult’s novel Plain Truth (2001) takes place in the Amish community.

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