“In the winter of 2021, I completed a new novel within days of receiving a diagnosis of an untreatable terminal illness (ALS). The novel was written quickly—more quickly than my novels usually take and more quickly than I “approve” of writing a novel. It emerged like come Coleridge-like opium-induced rush of an idea that insisted on being chronicled, sprung from Trump outrage and pandemic isolation, both of which banished my left-brain, vetting, editor-self into obscurity.”