There’s something just a bit off about the new aid worker, Janet McCann. The tall redhead with flaming ringlets arrives in Laos on a steamy August morning in 1961, on the same day that Fred Jenkins, a poultry expert, is found floating face down in the Mekong.

2031 was the year of the great migration. The highways were crowded with travelers seeking their personal paradise. For some, the destination was a place where religion could be practiced without interference, for others, a place where God didn’t intrude; a place where the lives of the unborn were sacred or a place where a woman was in control of her own body; a place where good citizens were expected to carry guns to maintain order, or where the ownership of guns was forbidden.

With the passage of the 28th amendment, the nation recognized what the founders had failed to grasp, that the establishment of any federal law granted freedom to some and abridged the freedom of others. Such a situation could not be allowed to stand in a country where freedom was the guiding principle.