Ghost Country: A Novel - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Sara Paretsky is the author of many novels, including her V. I. Warshawski series, which began with Indemnity Only. She lives in Chicago

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Sara Paretsky's genius made Chicago private eye V.I. Warshawski a household name. Now the "New York Times bestselling author explores an unseen corner of the city she loves. In "Ghost Country she has written a parable for the millennium, a powerful, haunting novel of magic and miracles, of four troubled people who meet beneath Chicago's shadowy streets--and of the woman whose mysterious appearance changes all of their lives forever.
They come from different worlds and meet at a time of crisis for all of them. Luisa, a drunken diva fallen on hard times, discovers on Chicago's streets a drama greater than any she has experienced onstage. Madeleine, a homeless woman, sees the Virgin Mary's blood seeping through a concrete wall beneath a luxury hotel. Mara, a rebellious adolescent cast out by her wealthy grandfather, becomes the catalyst for a war between the haves and have-nots as she searches among society's castoffs for the mother she never knew.
As the three women fight for their right to live and worship beneath the hotel, they find an ally in Hector Tammuz, an idealistic young psychiatrist risking his career to treat the homeless regardless of the cost. Tensions in the city are escalating when a mysterious woman appears during a violent storm. Erotic to some, repellent to others, she never speaks; the street people call her Starr. And as she slowly transforms their lives, miracles begin to happen in a city completely unprepared for the outcome.
In this extraordinary novel, Sara Paretsky gives voice to the dispossessed, to men and women struggling to bury the ghosts of the past, fighting for their lives in a world hungry for miracles, terrified of change. A magical, unforgettable story of myth and madness, hope and revelation, "Ghost Country is Sara Paretsky's most eloquent and ambitious work yet.

"From the Hardcover edition.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Gian Palmetto, president of the Hotel Pleiades, wants to know why they haven't heard back from their expensive lawyer at Scandon and Atter. Secretary phones secretary late in the day: a family emergency has summoned Ms. Stonds from the office.

Palmetto comes on the line in person--Sorry if Harriet has a personal crisis, but he needs advice, urgently, on how to dislodge a homeless woman from the sidewalk outside his garage. He spoke briefly to Harriet this morning; she promised to get on it. Will Harriet's secretary, for Christ's sake, find someone who knows what steps she's taken?  No one knows?  Surely Harriet isn't dragging her feet because she thinks the hotel mistreated her sister?

The secretary doesn't think so . . . the police?

Thank you, yes, he's been to the police. The sidewalk being public property the city won't arrest the damned woman for trespassing. The cops could cart her elsewhere, but they won't put her in jail. Someone suggested threats: rough the woman up a bit. Scare her into moving on. He could hardly order a subordinate to do that (wouldn't mind if it happened, but these days he can't order it: some busybody would find his E-mail or report him to the ACLU. And then, phht!--good-bye, career). Gian Palmetto needs other options. Given the three hundred dollars an hour he pays Scandon and Atter for Harriet's advice he'd appreciate a little activity.

"What kind of emergency?" he asks, wanting only to know how soon she'll be back in the office. "I didn't know Harriet had a family."

"The Stonds housekeeper, who's been with them a long time, had a heart attack this afternoon."

Family emergency. This conjures up a child falling from a swing, not a housekeeper with a heart attack. Gian Palmetto is understandably furious when he hangs up. Especially after the report he's received on Harriet's younger sister from the Special Events director. He goes out of his way to find a job for the sorriest specimen who's ever worked at the Pleiades, including dishwashers and laundry maids, and then the lawyer stiffs him because her housekeeper is sick. In the full flood of his anger he dictates a letter to senior partner Leigh Wilton.

Really, few people even at Scandon and Atter knew Harriet had a family. So burnished was her professional armor, so tightly did she keep all personal feelings locked in a remote chest, that her co-workers didn't know she was an orphan, that the housekeeper was as close as she could come to naming a mother. Not for her the chitchat with secretaries or associates on family matters. When Leigh Wilton complained about the lack of direction his children had, and how his two older sons had moved back home, Harriet shook her head in sympathy, but didn't share horror stories of Mara dropping out of Smith, hanging around in her bedroom or at bars, barely holding down a dead-end job at the Pleiades, then getting fired from that.

Yes, the hotel fired Mara, on Wednesday afternoon. Mrs. Ephers had her heart attack on Thursday. Before that she'd been in perfect health, aside from the occasional cold.

"We didn't know she had any heart disease," Grandfather Stonds told the cardiologist.

Didn't know she had a heart, Mara muttered to herself. They blamed her, Grandfather and Harriet. What did you do to her, Grandfather demanded, because Mrs. Ephers refused to go to the hospital until the doorman promised her that Mara would be kept out of the apartment until the doctor got home.

"What did she tell you?" Mara yelled at Grandfather, grabbing his arm, shaking it despite his icy anger at her for jarring his operating hand. "Did she give you the letter?  Did you see the photograph?  Who is it?"

Mara, seeing herself as the ugly lurching Caliban of the Graham Street apartment, secretly agreed she had caused Mephers's illness. Although her getting fired didn't bring on the attack--that only confirmed Mara as a failure, after all. Maybe Mephers's heart beat a little faster, with pleasure at seeing Mara flounder, but that wouldn't cause damage to the muscle.

No, it was Mephers's fury when she found Mara in her room going through her papers. The housekeeper pulled Mara to her feet, slapped her so hard that Mara had a black eye for six days, and then collapsed, clutching her left arm but refusing to cry out. She was eighty: hauling a nineteen-year-old, especially one as big as Mara, was too much exertion for her.

"They weren't her papers," Mara tried to tell her sister. "She had a letter about Grannie from somebody in France. It was written to Mother. And a photograph of a man who looks just like you."

Harriet stared at her. "Mara, I can't believe with Mephers in the hospital, seriously ill, you can have the temerity to make up more stories about Beatrix. You are old enough to stop this kind of playacting."

"It's not--I'm not!" Mara's muddy skin turned mahogany in fury. "Mephers always said we didn't have any pictures or documents or anything about Mother. Well, there was a letter to Mother from someone in France. And that picture, I'm telling you, that picture looked like you in drag!"

"Mephers is really ill, Mara. Don't go bothering me with stuff about Beatrix. Mephers is the only mother I ever had, or you, for that matter. You should be worrying about whether she's going to get well, not making up stories about Beatrix and France. If Mephers hadn't been worrying about you she wouldn't have been vulnerable to an attack."

Mara gasped at the injustice of Harriet's accusation. "Worrying about me?  She never worried about me a day in her life. When I came home on Wednesday I found her in my room, reading my journal."

Harriet gave her most tight-lipped, Mrs. Ephers-imitation smile. "You came home drunk after being fired. I heard about it from the president of the Pleiades Hotel. Mephers says she was trying to make some order out of the scrap heap you leave in your room--your desk, I might point out, looks like an ill-run recycling center--when you came in and started screaming at her. You may well have fancied Mephers was reading your journal as a drunken hallucination. The less said on the subject the better."

Grandfather said Hilda couldn't rest comfortably until she knew her privacy would be inviolate during her absence. The building super brought a locksmith up to the apartment and supervised the installation of a new dead bolt in the fat oak door to Mrs. Ephers's room. The super gave duplicate keys to Grandfather and Harriet, shook his head sadly at Mara, with whom he used to share Snickers bars in his basement apartment while they watched the Cubs, and left.

No one wanted to hear Mara's version of events. Yes, she had been fired. Yes, she was drinking at lunch. She hated the job, hated the stupid way they had to answer the phone: "Hotel Pleiades, soaring to new heights, how may I help you?" hated clients who screamed because centerpieces held daisies instead of chrysanthemums, hated having to say "I'm sorry you're disappointed, ma'am: the daisies are so bright and fresh, and the florist tells me the only mums we could get now would be wilted," when she wanted to pick up the centerpiece and brain the carp-faced woman. She hated above all the pointlessness of her own life, and often persuaded one of the waiters to bring her a double bourbon to brace her for the afternoon.

It was two-thirty when Mara had her termination interview. Two-hour lunches were not part of the job description for junior assistants in the Special Events office. You've been warned twice, as a courtesy to Ms. Stonds, the personnel director said, we have no choice now but to let you go. Turn in...