In a flashback in this novel, the “agency clown” Buz leers “you gonna write some poor-nography together!” after the protagonist meets a prematurely-graying writer while working at an auto parts warehouse. A character in this book hangs herself after being tricked into thinking her children have been lost, though they have just been staying with a relative in Baltimore. In this novel's section “The Fight,” the protagonist seeks (-5[1])to reach her husband (*) Kevin in Maine learning that her letters never reached him. The line "I lost my (10[1])arm on my last trip home" opens the prologue of this novel, much of which is set at the home of the protagonist's ancestors Alice Greenwood and Rufus Weylin. The writer Dana Franklin time-travels to an antebellum plantation in, for (10[1])10 points, what slave narrative-inspired Octavia Butler novel? ■END■