Beneath the Darkest Sky

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To my family: I love y’all! Thanks, Frank Weimann, Selena James, Lulu Martinez, James Fugate, Ben Jealous, Vanny Nguyen, Deborah Burton-Johnson, Anne Saller, Gabby Gruen, and Ryan Herr. All of you have been so kind and supportive.

Thanks to the helpful folks at UCLA’s Charles E. Young Research Library. A writer has never felt so at home. I’d be remiss not to mention how indebted I am to Professor Mark Hamilton for setting me on my creative path. And finally, I want to acknowledge the passing of a dear friend and artist, Deanna Hamro, who we lost in 2016. All of us love and miss you so much, DD!

Moscow, Russia

August 1937

I SAT AT THE DINING ROOM TABLE WITH MY FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLD TWINS, James and Ginger, waiting for my wife to come home for dinner. Six o’clock turned to seven and then eight. No sight of her and no telephone call either.

I’d asked the children to go ahead and eat their pot roast and vegetables from the Torgsin grocery, but they couldn’t muster up an appetite, consumed with worry over their absent mother. In the twenty-plus years we’d been together, she’d never been late for a planned dinner. I knew something was wrong.

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