I like the past. I don’t know if I’ll ever write much about the present day. The past interest me too much. Not because it was better. Maybe it wasn’t. But there are things about it I can’t seem to leave alone. The people. The neighborhoods. The way families lived. The things people did for money, for love, for survival—and the trouble they got themselves into along the way. Maybe that’s why so much of what I write seems to wander backward.