Queen of the Night

This novel is based on a true story of divorce and kidnapping occurring in Ohio in 1964. Unlike most divorce cases, it is the woman, Lesley, who loses legal custody of her children. While her husband, John Burke, is away on a business trip, she packs up her aging Plymouth station wagon and embarks on a fugitive cross-country trek with her four children. Thus on one level the work is a road novel of crossing America in the innocence of the mid-'60s. When their station wagon breaks down in Wyoming, Lesley and her children live camped on the banks of a remote mountain river, befriended by National Forest rangers, until they move into Jackson for the winter. Eventually the father locates the children in Jackson and re-kidnaps them back to Ohio where a final showdown takes place for the allegiance of the oldest son.