CALUMET CITY

A female Chicago police officer confronts her complex past in Newton’s absorbing debut novel.

Patti Black, whose beat takes her daily into a gang-dominated ghetto, is as tough as any guy on her squad. But a secret from her past, which she guards desperately, makes her emotionally vulnerable. A foster child following the death of her parents, Patti spent several years in a foster home, enduring unending abuse at the hands of a maniacal preacher. At the age of 15, Patti bolted from the home and took to the streets, where she spent the next few years doing whatever it took to survive. She ended up with a taste for alcohol that she's still fighting, and memories that follow her like a rabid dog. When a raid on a gangster stronghold leads to the discovery of a dead woman who had been walled-up and abandoned while alive, Patti is forced to confront the evil she thought she left behind. She reluctantly partners with a well-known journalist to follow a trail of destruction. Patti’s search for the fiend who stole her childhood takes her from Chicago to Calumet City to the Southwest desert.

A galloping ride from first page to last.