By Fire, By Water

Luke Ford writes: 

I just finished reading this terrific new novel by Mitchell James Kaplan.

We talk by phone today.

Luke: “Mitchell, when you were a child, did you want to be a novelist when you grew up?”

Mitchell: “Yes. Certainly from the age of 15 at the latest. Books were my refuge.”

Luke: “Refuge from what?”

Mitchell: “I grew up in the late ’60s, early ’70s. They were my refuge from a dysfunctional world. I think of fiction as a way of approximating truth, a way to try to find something beyond the dysfunction of the world that makes sense.”