My new novel Glorious Boy began with a dream. On a tropical island during an emergency evacuation, a young girl was hiding in a dense rainforest with a small, mute white boy in her care. The girl, local to this island, knew the boy’s parents would not take her with them. She was hiding out of equal parts jealousy and spite. Only when the noise outside died down would she and the child emerge to find the streets abandoned, spectral plumes of smoke rising in the distance, and the little boy’s parents gone. Only then would the girl realize what she had done.