Is there anything in ourselves that will continue after our death, or do we just exist, as some say, because of the chemical reactions and electrical firings going on within and among our neurons and other critical biological features? The late philosopher, Derek Parfit, suggested that the self actually continues on in the memories of others. The Black Walnut explores this idea with the story about the Levandowskis, a large, working-class family from New England whose youngest was snatched away one autumn afternoon in 1970.Bethany Levandowski was just nine years old when she was abducted and murdered. In her short life she barely had time to develop a sense of who she was. Her disappearance left an agonizing mystery that her parents and siblings carried with them as they lived through and were changed by the political, cultural and social events and trends of the 1970s, 80s, to the present, and into the future. Their own life stories demonstrate how they were impacted by the little girl's life and death and ponder the brain's relationship to the self and the peculiarities of perception.