The Weaving

What's the connection between a hooker from New Orleans, a high-fashion model in New York, and dirt farmers in the Ozarks? Each of these women knows more than she is saying, does more than she reveals, and sees further than we know. Their stories weave a fabric of intrigue that spans the country. Who are they? A hooker on the streets of New Orleans murders three men, then disappears. With help from her friends, she flees to a safe home in another state. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the country, other murders are taking place, but being targeted and clandestine, they baffle the medical examiners and confuse the FBI. At the FBI headquarters in Washington, a division head is quietly manipulated by his longtime secretary. A new task force leader, a Black woman, is hired and begins to unravel the mystery of the murders, but then finds her loyalties divided between the victims and the perpetrators – or rather between the competing aims of the investigation. She wrestles with disillusionment and depression as she is forced to participate in a corrupt and misguided endeavor. In the meantime, in a shelter community on a mountainside in the Ozarks, women come together to create a healing place for victims of human trafficking. Women – and some men – live here in 19th century simplicity, apparently isolated from the rest of society. The farm grows vegetables and seeds and livestock, but that’s not all. The stories of individual women become interwoven as the action shifts between big cities and near-wilderness, from the wielders of power to those who hide from it, from the law to the lawless. The Weaving is a feminist thriller full of personal discoveries and political intrigue, planning and execution. It will leave you wondering exactly who your neighbors are – or maybe even your grandma.