When I was young, I heard my father recite The Cre­ma­tion of Sam McGee so many times, I knew much of it by heart. This was a poem he always saved for the long drive home after a day of ice-fishing. I recall being jammed into the back­seat of a big car with my sis­ter and broth­ers and a cousin or two. The air smelled of trout, wet wool, and old smoke from the fire we’d made near the edge of the pond. Once set­tled, my father would begin, those words rolling out into the dark­ness of the car, his voice ris­ing and falling with each stanza. Even though I already knew the fate of ice-cold Sam McGee, the poem never ceased to hold me in its spell.

When I think of those dri­ves, which is often, I don’t remem­ber being cold or damp or com­pletely squashed. I remem­ber the sleepy charm of the poems and sto­ries my father told. And I remem­ber arriv­ing home all too quickly, as though a stretch of time had folded. There was weight­less­ness in those evenings. And I might dare to say, a tiny bit of magic.

Those moments, I believe, are part of the rea­son I keep chas­ing char­ac­ters, images, and ideas. By writ­ing, I strive to recap­ture that sense of won­der and antic­i­pa­tion, and then have the oppor­tu­nity to offer it to some­one else. A reader.

Glass Boys is my fourth novel. It will be pub­lished Fall 2011 by Dou­glas and McIn­tyre. Soon you’ll meet a num­ber of char­ac­ters who are close to my heart, and one who breaks it. Just a lit­tle. I am learn­ing as I go along, and I hope you’ll join me on the drive.