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Chapter 1

• A Long Way from Chicago is a composite novel, comprised of a Prologue and eight connected short stories featuring Joey Dowdel and his sister Mary Alice.

• In the Prologue, Joey Dowdel reminisces about the summers that he and his sister, Mary Alice went to visit their Grandma Dowdel.

• Joey is now an old man, older even than his Grandma was, and he remembers her as being larger than life.

• In the first short story, entitled “Shotgun Cheatham’s Last Night above Ground,” set in 1929, Joey is nine and Mary Alice is seven.

• Joey and Mary Alice leave Chicago and travel by train to visit their Grandma Dowdel who lives in a small town between Chicago and St. Louis.

• A man named Shotgun Cheatham gains notice in Grandma Dowdel’s town after his obituary runs in the paper.

• A newspaper from Peoria sends in a reporter, who heads...

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