Of Vonnegut's four adopted children, three are his nephews: James, Steven, and Kurt Adams. Vonnegut adopted them after a terrible week in 1958. During that week the children's father James Carmalt Adams was killed in a train crash and their mother died two days later. In his novel "Slapstick", Vonnegut told how Alice's husband had died two days before she did. Her family tried to keep her husband's death a secret. However, she found out when another patient gave her a newspaper one day before she died. The three boys had a younger brother named Peter Nice. He was a baby when their parents died. Peter went to live with their father's cousin in Birmingham, Alabama.