Shalamaine Reicher is a comely girl from the other sides of the tracks. Luck favored her with a rescue by a compassionate woman from the streets who cleaned her up and fostered her. They created a phony genealogy to acquire legitimate identification so the girl could be enrolled in school, giggling over the ease of the process, and settled on the name Shalamaine Reicher - as good or as bad as any she could have chosen from the repertoire of her mothers lovers (clients) - and now Celeste is her official aunt.

After graduating college and earning a masters degree, she got a job in journalism...