How it all begins . . . People disappear all the time. Ask any policeman. Better yet, ask a journalist. Young girls run away from home.
Young children stray from their parents and are never seen again.
Housewives reach the end of their tether and take the grocery money and a taxi to the station. International financiers change their names and vanish into the smoke of imported cigars. Many of the lost will be found, eventually, dead or alive. Disappearances, after all, have explanations. A little time travel on the Internet Diana Gabaldon has a rich online life, having participated in literary forums on CompuServe for more than nine years.