The third book began with the ocean.
I wrote it over two years, which was longer than either of the first two, because the third book required more from me than the first two had, demanding a wider frame and a longer sight line.
It was about all the people in the letters.
Not specifically, not by name, not their private stories made public. But the shape of what they had found and what had changed because of finding it, the specific phenomenon of a true thing doing its work in the world at a distance from its origin.
I wrote about the unnamed man’s six lines.
I wrote about the woman in Lagos and the doorway.
I wrote about the young woman in the arranged marriage who had found the word for leaving.
I wrote about the Edinburgh building and the chain of events that had produced it.
I
