When Percy Harding, Goliaths most important citizen, is discovered dead by the railroad tracks outside town one perfect autumn afternoon, no one can quite believe its really happened. Percy, the president of the towns world-renowned furniture company, had seemed invincible. Only Rosamond Rogers, Percys secretary, may have had a glimpse of how and why this great man has fallen, and that glimpse tugs at her, urges her to find out more. Percy isnt the first person to leave Rosamond: everybody seems to, from her husband, Hatley, who walked out on her years ago; to her complicated daughter Agnes, whose girlhood bedroom was papered with maps of the places she wanted to escape to. The town itself is Rosamonds anchor, but it is beginning to quiver with the possibility of change. The high school girls are writing suicide poetry. The towns young, lumbering sidewalk preacher is courting Rosamonds daughter. A troubled teenaged boy p
