“You look like you’re going to a funeral in a Greenwich Village coffeehouse.” Jo turned up Center Street, heading toward the library.

“I don’t want her to think I’m a kid.”

“There’s absolutely nothing wrong with being sixteen and liking her book.”

“I love her book, Mom.” Jenny clutched the novel to her breast. “She writes with such a deep understanding of tragedy.”

“I suspect that’s because she’s lived with tragedy, Jenny.”

“To lose the man you love, and so mysteriously.” Jenny stared down at the dust jacket of Superior Blue. The cover art showed the dark blue of Lake Superior curving away beneath a menacing blue-black sky. Caught at the edge of earth and air, as if trapped in the mouth of a huge blue monster, was a small sailboat with an empty deck.

“Believe me, Jen, tragedy’s more appealing in the abstract than in the reality. It makes a good read, but it’s awful to live through.”

“Do you think there’ll be a lot of people?”

“If I know Maggie Nelson, she’ll make sure people turn out in droves.”

Two dozen chairs had been set up in the meeting room of the Aurora Public Library. By the time Jo and Jenny arrived, all the chairs had been taken. Along with half a dozen other late arrivals, Jo stood at the back of the room, Jenny beside her. Most of the audience were women, but a few men had come.

“Mom, there he is,” Jenny whispered. “The guy who talked to me in French yesterday. The one who went to the Sorbonne.”

She pointed toward a young man standing against the wall on the other side of the room. Jo pegged him to be in his early twenties. A thin blond mustache dusted his upper lip. He wore scruffy jeans and a white T-shirt that wasn’t exactly clean. Jo recognized him, too. She’d seen him only that morning being interviewed by a newsman at the tent city on the Iron Lake Reservation. He’d spoken ill-advisedly then. She hoped he didn’t have any other ill-advised notions at the moment and was there only because he admired Grace Fitzgerald’s book.