MAY 1966
The walled and gated McGrath estate was a world unto itself, private. On this twilit evening, the Tudor-style home looked jewel-like amid the lush, landscaped grounds. Paper lanterns and candles floated on the surface of the pool and glowed in the branches of a large California live oak. Black-clad servers moved through the well-dressed crowd, carrying silver trays full of champagne, and music played softly in the corner.
Twenty-year-old Frances Grace McGrath knew most of the guests here tonight. She was to be the very portrait of a well-bred girl: serene; any untoward emotions were to be contained with absolute silence. The lessons Frankie had been taught at her alma mater, St. Bernadette’s Academy for Girls had instilled in her these values. The unrest going on across the country these days, with marches and college campuses, was a distant and alien world to her, as was the conflict in faraway Vietnam.
She circulated among the guests, sipping an ice-cold Coca-Cola, trying to