With that as a backdrop, I had met Darcie Fendlewiesen, a nightclub owner and immigrant from Santa Teresa. She had grown up in Santa Teresa under the teachings of the Book of Kammbi and was due to get married at twenty-one like all the women of that city. But instead, Darcie rejected that mandate and left her birth city. Like Walter Fuente had many years before, she came to Walter’s Grove and remade herself in a place with no rules. Darcie had rejected the teachings of the Book of Kammbi and wanted me to do the same. She believed that people should not be controlled by outdated beliefs, especially if they forced women to get married whether they wanted to or not.
While in Walter’s Grove, however, I had met Ciscoe and Latisha Maldonado, a dancing couple who had gotten a copy of the Book of
