Skip to main content  About the Book  About the Book   Patty and
Walter Berglund were the new pioneers of old St. Paul --- the
gentrifiers, the hands-on parents, the avant-garde of the Whole
Foods generation. Patty was the ideal sort of neighbor, who
could tell you where to recycle your batteries and how to get
the local cops to actually do their job. She was an enviably
perfect mother and the wife of Walter’s dreams. Together with
Walter --- environmental lawyer, commuter cyclist, total family
man --- she was doing her small part to build a better world.
But now, in the new millennium, the Berglunds have become a
mystery. Why has their teenage son moved in with the
aggressively Republican family next door? Why has Walter taken a
job working with Big Coal? What exactly is Richard Katz ---
outré rocker and Walter’s college best friend and rival ---
still doing in the picture? Most of all, what has happened to
Patty? Why has the bright star of Barrier Street become “a very
different kind of neighbor,” an impla