Going back to South Chicago has always felt to me like a return to death. The people I loved most, those fierce first attachments of childhood, had all died in this abandoned neighborhood on the city’s southeast edge.” So begins V I Warshawski’s newest saga. V I has left her old neighborhood, but she learns here that she cannot escape it. When her high school basketball coach implores her to take over the team at V I’s former high school, the detective feels compelled to agree. Her team is a ragtag group of gangbangers, fundamentalists, and teenage moms. The school cannot afford equipment or uniforms, let alone a proper coach. As V I works with them, she inevitably gets drawn into the woes and worries that face their families.