Peppy and I drove through the night, stopping in a motel outside Des Moines so I could sleep for a few hours. We crossed the Little Calumet as dawn was breaking on Thursday morning. The crowded streets of my childhood lay below me on the Skyway; the tower formerly known as Sears was silhouetted along Lake Michigan to the north. When we reached the South Side beaches, I pulled off the road to let Peppy swim. The water was cold, colder than the Kaw, but I stripped and jumped in with her. I needed the clear, cold waters of Lake Michigan to cleanse myself.

I toweled off under the shelter of a big rock and put on my good trousers, my rose cashmere sweater, my Magli heels.

When we reached our building on Racine, Mr. Contreras was waiting out front, tanned from his weeks in the Caribbean, smiling so widely his ears might have fallen off.

“You made it home safe, doll. You made it home safe. The doc kept me posted, or I would’ve been down there myself to patch you up. You come on in. People have been cooking, people are desperate to see you.”

Lotty emerged from the hallway, Max Loewenthal beside her. Sal Barthele towered over them, August’s cousin Angela next to her, with Troy Hempel and his mother nearby. Bernie came out from behind Mr. Contreras. She was starting toward me when Mitch gave a tremendous bark and broke through the throng. He jumped on me, knocking me to the ground. I lay there, laughing, and kicked my heels together.

Thanks

In some ways this novel, which takes V.I. out of her comfort zone in Chicago and sends her to Kansas, is my own origin story. The story line was suggested by an event in my father’s scientific life. He was a cell biologist at the University of Kansas from 1951 until his death in 2000; an experience he had at a rickettsia conference in Bratislava in 1964 underlies this novel.

The book is set in and around the town of Lawrence, Kansas, where I grew up. I have taken a number of liberties with the town, both its topography and its institutions. I’ve restructured the Lawrence Memorial Hospital to meet V.I.’s needs. I’ve filled in part of the ravine along the south side of the Kaw River to make room for Riverside Church. I’ve tampered with the layout of the Judicial and Law Enforcement Center and the workings of the county sheriff and the city police. I’ve inserted a missile silo into the Douglas County landscape, somewhere between the Pendleton farm and my own childhood home. I apologize for any land I may have misappropriated.

In Chicago, I have added an Area Six to the police department structure so that my fictional cops can operate without reference to any real police operations.