February 29, 2012 It all began with a Christmas gift of Provinces of Night from my neighbors, Diana and Gary Fisketjon. I’m not sure which of them told me it was an important book, but coming from either of them it was high praise. Whatever I was already reading that Christmas, I soon put it aside as I began to lose myself in William Gay’s powerful novel.

July 30, 2010 The truth was there before me from that first event at my local bookstore, when two devotees of a book they have never read—a man and a woman—got in a slugfest over who would be last to meet me, and the woman won. Somehow in the commotion, as the staff was ushering me out a side door, I knew in my heart that this was going to be a long book tour.