Against the backdrop of a quixotic search for a long-disappeared woman, O'Banion's gift is a fascinating journey through the disparate worlds of Capone-dominated Chicago and the professional bluster of a modern law firm, all seen through the eyes of former prosecutor Riley McReynolds. Forced by law firm politics to represent a corrupt CEO in a divorce action where a young child is being used as a pawn in a high-stakes financial struggle, McReynolds retreats into historical documentaries to take his mind off the case. When he tunes into an account of Prohibition Era Chicago, he learns of Al Capone's legendary feud with Irish gang chief Dion O'Banion - a feud that came to a bloody end on November 10, 1924 when O'Banion was gunned down by Capone operatives in his North Side flower shop. The personal grudge had been settled, but the gang war that O'Banion's murder provoked was to last for five more years, culminating in the St.Valentine's Day Massacre in 1929. Unaccountably enthralled by the face of a beautiful young girl standing at O'Banion's graveside, McReynolds resolves to find out who she was and what became of her. Traveling to Chicago, he discovers that the girl was Bridey Reaves - a 16-year-old orphan left in O'Banion's care - and that she fled Chicago with the small fortune O'Banion had swindled from Capone. Now, seventy-two years later, McReynolds sets out to find the girl and the money, a search that takes him across the Midwest and through a series of subterfuges and deceptions. What starts out as ordinary curiousity [sic] soon ripens into an obsession as he traces her anxious flight from Mob executioners down through the years. Weaving together a 1996 divorce and the quest for a beautiful and mysterious woman, Michael O'Rourke delivers an absorbing and highly entertaining story. With a keen eye for our deepest longings, O'Banion's Gift is a moving account of one man's journey through the past and present. It is a captivating, touching, and charmingly funny story. --