Prologue Summary

This complex, multi-faceted narrative tells the story of reclusive novelist Bill Gray's ill-fated attempt return to public life. In language rich in both ideas and imagery, and following a plotline incorporating several historical events and places, the book also explores the metaphoric relationship between terrorism and writing, the power and influence of dictatorship, and the tension in relationships between the need for connection and the need for isolation.

"At Yankee Stadium" Businessman Roger and his wife Maureen sit among crowds of people in the bleachers at Yankee Stadium, all there to witness the mass wedding of thousands of followers of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon. Roger, unprepared to accept that his daughter is a part of what he feels to be a profoundly disturbing situation, scans the massive crowd of couples gathering on the playing field, hoping to glimpse his daughter Karen. As...