Correction of Drift: A Novel in Stories

It was called the crime of the century, and it was front-page news: the Lindbergh kidnapping, the disappearance of the world's most famous baby. Correction of Drift: A Novel in Stories imagines the private lives behind the headlines of the Lindbergh kidnapping case, and examines the endurance--and demise--of those consumed by the tragedy.

There is Anne Morrow Lindbergh, daughter of a millionaire, the shy poet who married a national hero; Charles Lindbergh, the rough-and-tumble Minnesota barnstormer, who at age twenty-five made the first solo transatlantic flight, bringing him astounding world-wide prestige; Violet, the skittish family maid with a curious attachment to their boy and a secret life that lapses into hysteria and self-destruction; and the kidnappers, an assembly of misfits with their own histories of misery.

All are bound by the violence, turmoil, and mystery of the child's disappearance. And as the days, weeks, and years pass, it becomes evident that each life has been irrevocably changed and continues to spin out beyond the event itself. Patterns of bereavement and loss illuminate these stories: despair at the death of a child; the retreat into seclusion; the comfort-and the desolation-of marriage. But the heart of this novel is the far-reaching nature of tragedy, and the ways the characters continue to live their lives.