This novel is based on a true story of divorce and kidnapping occurring in Ohio in 1964. Unlike most divorce cases, it is the woman, Lesley, who loses legal custody of her children. While her husband, John Burke, is away on a business trip, she packs up her aging Plymouth station wagon and embarks on a fugitive cross-country trek with her four children. Thus on one level the work is a road novel of crossing America in the innocence of the mid-'60s...