Jesse Vogel uses his inheritance from William Shirer to start his own clinic. He attends a doctors' conference with his family - Helene, Jeanne, and their younger daughter Michele (Shelley) - in New York City on November 22, 1963. Jesse works harder than ever, at his clinic and on editing the book that Dr. Perrault failed to complete before dying. As he neglects his family, his daughter Shelley becomes very rebellious, though Jeanne progresses and plans to study biology in college. Shelley travels with some friends to Toledo, and after they get arrested Jesse drives there and takes her home. Shelley eventually runs away again, this time for good, and she sends postcards to her father with no return address. These postcards come from all over the map - Homestead, the Gulf of Mexico, New York City, San Angelo, Best, Venice Beach - and Shelley says that she is with a young man named Noel. One postcard mentions the poet T. W. Monk, and Jesse journeys to New York to find Trick. Trick is now a published poet but also in poor health and a drug addict, and Trick has no useful information as to Shelley's whereabouts. Finally a postcard says that she is on Yonge Street, in Toronto, and it implies that she is very sick from drug abuse. Jesse drives to Toronto and finds her emaciated in a disgusting apartment. She resists her father, saying that Noel told her that Jesse is the devil.