Excerpt from The Webster Chronicle by Daniel Akst, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

The next thing he heard was Melissa’s soothing voice. "This is obviously a hot subject here tonight," she said, "just as it was when it was first laid to rest a couple of years ago, and the League will be scheduling a forum on it very soon, I promise you that. So I’m gonna cut off the discussion now before we get going in a direction that keeps us here until morning or a technical knockout, I don’t know which."

One or two good-natured titters arose, and Terry wondered why sensible, adept Melissa Faircloth was not queen of the universe. He marveled at her unerring instincts and tried to give her a warm look. Maybe it was time to take the head of the League to lunch.

When Melissa had thanked all the panelists, she firmly told the audience to remain seated. Like all League audiences, this one consisted entirely of gluttons for enlightenment who had no trouble doing so.

"I’m pleased to introduce a special guest this evening," said Melissa, "a newcomer to our community who has a very important message to share with us tonight. I’ve taken the liberty of inviting her because I thought you’d all want to meet her, and because I think the subject of her professional concern is so important. So without further ado, let’s all welcome Diana Shirley, the county’s new child sex-abuse specialist, who will say just a few brief words to us. Diana?"

To his horror, the woman Terry had been staring at suddenly rose and was approaching the stage. Frantically, he ignored her, then thought better and flashed a weak smile, but she wasn’t looking. He loved the way she moved. Why on earth did the county need an expert on the sexual abuse of children? What jittery times, Terry thought; poor Leon Klinghoffer had only recently been shot and thrown off the deck of the Achille Lauro by Palestinian terrorists, and the other day Terry’s lifelong dentist confronted him with rubber gloves and a mask. Like everyone else, he was worried about AIDS. Child abuse wouldn’t surprise anyone in such a climate. Dimly he recalled something about a grant for this. At least the person they were funding was good-looking.

The room was silent as the speaker, without a shred of nervousness, affirmed how glad she was to be in Webster and how grateful she was to Mayor Loquendi for his help in securing the federal funding that had enabled the county to employ her. Then, knowing she was speaking on what amounted to borrowed time, she quickly described the national problem of incest and child abuse, which only now allowed its name to be spoken. There were an estimated 240,000 cases of child sexual abuse annually in this country, she said with striking matter-of-factness. It was something that happened in every community in America, even in a place as nice as Webster. With confidence, she reported that someone in this room had been the victim of such abuse as a child, and that more than one person knew someone who was an abuser. Terry paid close attention, not just to the words but to the person who spoke them. She was a small, erect woman with a childlike quality about her features, even though she was probably thirty-five, and she had a powerful voice of unusual clarity delivered from a small mouth beneath round, dark eyes and short, curly hair of an oaky blonde color. He thought her supremely sexy.

Fortunately, she continued, community resources were starting to become available for dealing with this most hidden and shameful problem, both for the abuser and his or her victims. Many of those in attendance took notes, as women often did at such gatherings, but Terry didn’t notice because he was absorbed by his own note-taking, and by the speaker’s unusual ability to compel attention. He was reminded of schoolteachers he’d had as a boy, their posture perfect and their voices confident.

"The thing for all of us to remember, in this day when children seem so unfortunately grown up, is that they are innocent, they are powerless. Children have no lobbyists, they don’t get to vote, they don’t have lawyers, they can’t write letters to the editor. Somebody must speak for the children. And that somebody"---she paused and looked around---"that somebody is us. It’s nobody but us. Because if our voices are silent, if your voices are silent, you, as the people of Webster, then these children who are being abused have no other option but to lean their heads against the window pane of the school bus and watch their childhoods slip away.

Reprinted from The Webster Chronicle by Daniel Akst by permission of BlueHen Books, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc. Copyright © 2001 by Daniel Akst. All rights reserved. This excerpt, or any parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.