Working-class Providence, Rhode Island, is poised on the eve of a new political millennium. Of the city's fifteen districts, ward eleven is the most impoverished and racially diverse. As the year 2000 looms, local politics are complicated by: a secret society of heroin dealers, a Dominican Republic-based doomsday cult, an Ivy League journalism student, and a taxicab driver. City Council candidate Hector Lucian is predicted to win by a landslide,...