Intricate and brooding, ["Ceremony of Innocence"] is a tragic profile of young martyrs: Sophia, fearless and foolhardy, a German Joan of Arc; Hans, intense and solemn, a fatalist with Socratic fortitude…. They knew their work would not change the world but, as Sophia says, "It's a way of keeping the world from changing you." Dramatizing the heroic Scholls, James Forman uses flashbacks to weave in powerful episodes, battle on the Western and Russian fronts, and cameo portraits…. But it is the Scholls who dominate the tapestry: Sophia and Hans, naive and childlike, but poignant and transcendent in their futile search for justice in an evil environment.