My story is set in the present with all its political stress and strain. However, all the characters, lay and clerical, are products of my imagination. None of the denizens of the Capitol and the Beltway are based on any real people, though of course they represent certain tendencies in American political life. The two United States Senators from the Prairie State are both friends of mine. Senator Thomas Moran is not like either of them save in that all three are Democrats. I take no stands on some of the arguments between the Catholic Church and Catholic political leaders. However, I am sympathetic to the dilemma of Senators like Thomas Patrick Moran and I agree with him that continued efforts to force Catholic politicians to impose the Church’s teachings on the rest of the country by denying them the Eucharist will lead to the disappearance of Catholics from the country’s political life. No one will remain to support the Church’s traditional teachings on war, poverty, and social justice. The two newspapers bear the names of extinct Chicago journals and are not meant to represent any current newspapers in the city.
Some readers will accuse me of “partisanship” because my protagonists are Democratic—they wouldn’t complain if I had made them Republicans. Rules for Republicans are different. In fact I am a Democrat and have been all my life. I make no apology for alignment with the party that, whatever its faults may have been, has always remained the party of the poor and the oppressed. Moreover, it would be difficult to write a story about the United States Senate and hide one’s own partisanship.