Wars make history seem deceptively simple. They provide clear turning points, easy distinctions.: before and after, winner and loser, right and wrong. True history, the past, is not like that. It isn't flat or linear. It has no outline. It is slippery, like liquid; infinite and unknowable, like space. And it is changeable: just when you think you see a pattern, perspective shifts, an alternate version is proffered, a long-forgotten memory resurfaces.

I am not a storyteller . . . not like the others. I only have one tale to tell.

What could be more perfect than marrying the person you love.

Rejection is a cancer, Edie. It eats away at a person.

All true readers have a book, a moment when real life is never going to be able to compete with fiction again.

A true friend is a light in the dark. Viven

In real life turning points are sneaky. They pass by unlabeled and unheeded. Opportunities are missed, catastrophes unwittingly celebrated. Turning points are only uncovered later, by historians who seek to bring order to a lifetime of tangled moments.