Celeste Fremon

Illustration by Bill Smith SOPHIA VIDAL DISAPPEARED ON MONDAY, November 29, 1999. At least, that's the day her friend Isabel Trujillo realized she was missing. On the previous Friday, Sophie, 28, had dropped her three boys off at Isabel's house, ostensibly for the weekend. She said she had to work......

Photo by Anne FishbeinJOANIE MURRAY* GETS HER $221 GENERAL RELIEF CHECK on the eighth day of every month, and today is the 8th of April. In addition to the $221, Joanie will get $125 in food stamps, the maximum allowed on GR. This seems like an unnervingly small amount to......

THREE WEEKS BEFORE MY SON, WILL, TURNED 13, he received his first bar mitzvah invitation. It was elegantly engraved on paper the color and texture of crème fraîche and came in an envelope professionally addressed in five-dollars-a-pop calligraphy. He waited until he was in his room, then opened it with......

Photo: AP/Wide World In February of 1978, almost exactly 21 years ago, I went to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan with the notion of meeting with the king. It was a heady time in the Middle East. Anwar Sadat had just made his historic trip to Jerusalem, and the rest......

Everyone knew that Erica's capable nature would require that she preserve herself now that she was carrying a baby. Rosemary's and Ophie's miracles transpired in fits and starts, but partly, one could say, they were both saved by the power of love. Rosemary hit bottom right around the time she......

In February of 1996, Ophelia Duarte, who had turned 23 in the summer, decided she wanted to baptize all three of her sons. Ophie is small and curvy, with a Brigitte Bardot mouth and a mass of bottle-red hair that blows around her like carmine fog. Her eyes are large......