Written for readers who have finished Book 1.
The White Stone is set in the commuter suburbs of Virginia, just outside the capital: strip malls and county lines, gravel turn-offs to family houses with dogwoods in the yard, the lights on Route 7 at night. In early summer the evenings go long and green and the parking lots hold their heat past midnight. After dark the cul-de-sacs fall into the great blank quiet of commuter country, where nothing is open for miles. It is prosperous and churchgoing, three years on from a contested national day that its biggest pulpit has never once named, and more than ready to be grateful for a peace that holds.