“Not Under the Law” is the story of a girl who is forced to take her life into her own hands.

Living with her aunt’s family since her own mother died, Joyce Radway is much put-upon by her cruel cousin and his family in the two weeks following her aunt’s death.

She wants to become a teacher to gain some independence and they want her to be their all-but-slave in exchange for her keep. When she leaves the house without permission to take her teacher’s exams, it starts a chain of events that result in her walking out the kitchen door and never looking back.

Her sudden flight leads her to stumble upon a band of graveyard bootleggers and she recognizes one of them as a friend from her childhood—a man who we later find out has loved her since boyhood from afar. He lets her escape, but her recognition of him and his realization through it of the sin he is committing, starts him on two journeys—one to find her again and the other to find forgiveness of sin.

The criminals pursue her throughout the story, while she is trying to establish herself apart from her family in a most unique way in a new town—by buying a "house" for $15 and building her furniture from packing crates! After earning her first money by saving a hostess from culinary distaster, she eventually realizes her dream of teaching.

However, back in her hometown, she is thought to have been abducted and murdered by Sherwood, who has now become a Christian. She walks into the trial very much alive, to the surprise of those present, and saves his life. What happens in the closing pages of this story will take you by surprise, too!