Seventy Years Gone

Sweetwater is classic, small-town America, complete with picket fences, a malt shop, and a wooden statue of an Indian chief on the sidewalk outside the tobacco store. It’s the kind of place where boys give their steady girlfriends their class rings to wear.

At least, that’s the Sweetwater Gordon remembers, the one he left a year ago.

But the town he sees now is abandoned. The buildings are falling down. And his girlfriend, along with all the other residents, is long gone. Seventy years gone...