Excerpts from 'Abducted By Circumstance'

The following excerpts from David Madden's "Abuducted By Circumstance" are printed with permission from its publisher, The University of Tennessee Press.

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"I am trying to see Watertown through your eyes, Glenda. There comes up the Old Jail Antiques place. Do you frequent that place? And we have that new beauty parlor in our old jail. Silly, I know, but I feel a link with you. I'm pulling over to go in there."

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"Which way will he go? Further east? And if so, further south to Gouverneur or north to the Ogdensburg area again or direct east to Canton? Or back toward Highway 12 and the briar thicket on the river bank between Alexandria Bay and Chippewa Bay? Whichever,heknows what he is doing. Killing time, knowing the energy of the hunt dwindles and the focus of it scatters, but that hunt never strays into these desolate places."

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"Looking up at the Methodist steeple, she felt drawn to that basement rock, hearing her mother's voice explaining to her when she was six or so that the foundation of the church was cut into a single solitary immense stone. Secretly, she had sought it, along passageways, through doors, and seeing it, rushed toward it, upon it, touched it with both palms, hungering."

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"F stops at the Oxbow Country Store. Get a fix on what you see. Ice to the left, by the door, OPEN to the right, then BUDWEISER, then a mailbox. The view out your side window is striking, that white church, bold steeple, at the end of the one street.

"Please, when you're in there, get me a pocket comb."

"Run, Glenda, jump out and run."