Upon John Quincy Adams’s commencement of studies where all future Presidents get their start—at the University of Leyden, in Holland—his father, John Adams, gave him some advice. According to David McCullough’s Adams biography, your one-stop shopping source for all things John Adams, it was a paternal imperative that John Quincy attend all lectures possible in […]
The Prologue: The End No living thing flew over the village of Gibbeah, neither fowl, nor dove, nor crow. Yet few looked above, terrified should an omen come in a shriek or flutter. Nothing flew but dust. It slipped through window blades, door cracks, and the lifting clay of rooftops. Dust coated house and ground, […]
The voice of your new novel, of the protagonist Peter Kim, age 12, is unlike any other in literature. Had you developed this voice, or the character, before writing Las Cucarachas? I didn’t set out to develop the voice of the narrator in Las Cucarachas. I did know, however, that I wanted to write a […]
Chapter 1: Home The wind was blowing across the Puget Sound and into Seattle, bringing with it a tang of salt in the air. I stood in the middle of a neglected garden and inhaled the odor of my childhood, thousands of languorous days and nights next to the water. Growing up, I played on […]
Chapter 1 Landing in the midst of the descendants of vikings, the transatlantic flight with a one-year-old daughter and a wife teetering with apprehension has all but wiped out Pharaoh’s capacity to Chill out! The phrase was embraced by his wife, Hannah, during her twelve-year sojourn in California, and she continues to use it officiously. […]
(King’s Cross) Dougie arrived at the concourse opposite the station just half an hour after it had all gone off. He’d had the cab driver drop him down the end of Gray’s Inn Road, outside a pub on the corner there, where he’d made a quick dive into the gents to remove the red hood […]
(San Marino) They caught up with Russell Chen as he drove home from work, running his Lexus off the frontage road by the gravel pits of Irwindale. There were four of them, wearing reflective sunglasses and trucker caps pulled low, and for one terrified moment Chen though they meant to jack the car, kill him, […]
(Clinton) She felt his eyes on her just about the time the bartender placed a Beck’s coaster on the bar and set her dry Rob Roy on top of it. She wanted to turn and see who was eyeing her, but remained as she was, trying to analyze just what it was she felt. She […]