V. I. Warshawski may have left her old South Chicago
neighborhood, but she learns that she cannot escape it.
When V. I. takes over coaching duties of the girls'
basketball team at her former high school, she faces an
ill-equipped, ragtag group of gangbangers,
fundamentalists, and teenage moms, who inevitably draw the
detective into their family woes.
Through young Josie Dorrado, V. I. meets the girl's
mother, who voices her worries about sabotage in the
little flag manufacturing plant where she works. The
biggest employer on the South Side, discount-store
behemoth By-Smart, pays even less, and Ms. Dorrado doesn't
know how she'll support her four children if the flag
plant shuts down.
The elder Dorrado's fears are realized when the plant
explodes; V. I. is injured and the owner is killed. As V.
I. begins to investigate, she finds herself confronting
the Bysen family, who own the By-Smart company. Founder
William "Buffalo Bill" Bysen, now in his eighties, has
four sons who quarrel with each other and with him; the
oldest, "Young Mr. William," is close to sixty and furious
that his father doesn't cede more power to him. And then,
there's "Billy the Kid," Young Mr. William's nineteen-year-
old son, whose Christian idealism puts him on a collision
course with his father, his grandfather, and the company
as a whole.
When Billy runs away with Josie Dorrado, V. I. is squeezed
between the needs of two very different families. As she
tries to find the errant teenagers, and to track down a
particularly cruel murderer, her own life is almost
forfeit in the swamps that lie under the city of Chicago.
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