Reviewers said Ghost Country was rich, astonishing and affecting in the way it blended comedy, magic, and a gritty urban realism in a breathtaking ride along Chicago's mean streets.
Sara ParetskyAnd the fury in my community was just staggering. The young priests in the parish were behind the message. The older priests weren't necessarily, but they all followed the orders of the cardinal and read the letter. Every Sunday, 2,000 people came to mass at that parish. The following Sunday, the attendance dropped to 200, and never recovered.
Sara ParetskyI spent 10 years as a marketing manager. I've found my experience in the financial world invaluable background for writing about white-collar crimes.
Sara ParetskyOrganizer is kind of a grand term for what I was doing. I answered an ad that the Presbyterian Church of Chicago put up on college campuses. I was at the University of Kansas, and it's somewhat relevant to my life and work that I'm a Jew. But they weren't doing a religious litmus test. They wanted energetic, civil-rights-committed college students to come help them run some summer programs.
Sara ParetskyBut what I've learned is, when your adrenaline is flowing, you can do a lot. I'm not very physical, but once some punks were trying to break into my house and I chased them down.
Sara ParetskyWhile we were walking around, we came to the Catholic church, and we saw that some people had set fire to carpets and banked them around the rectory, which was made out of wood. They knew every fire truck on the South Side was going to be in the park, that the rectory would just burn to the ground. Our one little act was putting out that fire.
Sara Paretsky