Are our morals imbued in us through teaching and example, or do we come into this world with our personality and values written in our genes? The Legacy of Cain is novelist Wilkie Collins' engrossing take on the age-old nature-or-nurture question. When a woman sentenced to death begs a man of the cloth to care for her soon-to-be-orphaned child, the situation presents itself as a profound conundrum: is the offspring inevitably doomed to repeat the sins and transgressions of its ancestors, or is there a chance for redemption?