David Reichart

Every Able Body David Reichart

Publisher Marketing: It's 1943, and Mobile, Alabama, is a wartime boomtown under siege by thousands of newcomers who have left the backwoods and overworked cotton fields to seek their fortune in the city's bustling shipyards. Shantytowns and tent cities are erected to shelter those who aren't crammed into every available room and boarding house. Schools work in shifts but can't meet the demand; garbage and sewage problems cause rumors of typhoid, and out on the streets, young women are disappearing. In the absence of success by the city's undermanned and overworked police force to get leads on a white slavery ring, the fate of the missing women depends on the efforts of three people with different motives: private investigator Frank Lundy, a football legend who's 4-F and sensitive about it; police reporter Valerie Gilbreath, a former debutante and Mardi Gras queen just beginning her newspaper career; and Alfred Page, an AWOL black soldier targeted for murder by a manic swamp dweller who comes to town with revenge on his mind and supports himself by doing dirty work for the kidnapping ring. There's one thing they all agree on: Sally McGinn never should have gone down to the neon district on a school night. Review Citations: Publishers Weekly 02/23/2015 (EAN 9781477545652, Paperback)