Scott Sigler's "Infected"

Scott Sigler's fiction podcasts have drawn a huge and devoted following. His serialized stories have held the number one position in all the podcast indexes, including iTunes. Sigler’s first hardcover release, Infected, was translated into a dozen languages and is being adapted for film by Random House Films/Rogue Pictures.

His response to “Page 99 Test” --i.e. Is Ford Madox Ford's statement "Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you," accurate for your latest book, Infected?:

Totally. I'd read this book based on page 99.

From page 99:

“Your theory sounds about as far-fetched as the Loch Ness monster,” Amos said.

“Well what about the coelacanth? People thought it was extinct for seventy million years until a fisherman caught one in 1938. Just because someone hasn’t seen it doesn’t mean it isn’t there, Amos.”

“Right,” Amos said. “And this thing happened to remain dormant for hundreds of years in areas of extreme population density? It would be one thing to find this deep in the Congo jungle, but quite another to find it in Detroit. This isn’t AIDS, where people just die, these are defined, triangular growths. In the communication age, something like this doesn’t go unreported. Pardon my brusqueness, but you’ll have to find another theory.”

Margaret nodded absently. Amos was right. The concept of a dormant human parasite didn’t wash. Whatever these things were, they were new.

Amos changed the subject: “Have Murray’s men found any connection amongst the victims?”

“Nothing yet. They’ve traced the travel of all victims and anyone the victims came in contact with. There’s no connection. Most of the victims hadn’t traveled anywhere. The only link is that Judy Washington and Gary Leeland, the two Detroit cases, happened within a week of each other and happened at the same retirement home. They checked that place out with a fine-toothed comb. No one else shows any signs of infection. They’ve run tests on the water, the food, the air – nothing out of the ordinary, although we’re still not sure what to look for so that doesn’t rule anything out.

“The two Toledo cases were weeks apart, but fairly close to each other, within a few blocks. There seems to be some proximity effect. The transmission vector is unknown, but Murray still thinks there’s a terrorist out there deliberately infecting random people.”

“That fits with our observations,” Amos said. “I’m more and more convinced that Brewbaker and the others may have been contaminated, but weren’t contagious. We’ve found nothing on him indicative of eggs, an embryonic form, or anything else that could be responsible for new parasites. Besides, Dew hasn’t shown any symptoms, nor has anyone who came in contact with Brewbaker’s body.”

Watch the video trailer for Infected, and learn more about the author and his work at Scott Sigler's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Norman Housley's "Fighting for the Cross"

Norman Housley is professor of history and Head of the School of Historical Studies, University of Leicester. He is a world authority on the Middle Ages and on the Crusades in particular.

He applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, Fighting for the Cross: Crusading to the Holy Land, and reported the following:

Page 99 of Fighting for the Cross takes you to the anti-Jewish pogroms that happened in 1096 at places like Worms, Mainz and Cologne, right at the start of the First Crusade. Whether or not this passage indicates the book’s quality is for the reader to judge, but it certainly tells you a lot about what crusading meant for both participants and their contemporaries, Christian, Muslim and Jewish – and that’s what the book is all about. What did it mean to go on crusade, or to suffer at the hands of those that went? The ugliness of some crusading ideas, especially vendetta, is centre stage, but so too are the incredible demands that going on crusade posed – especially the financial ones, because there’s no doubt that the attacks on the Rhineland Jews came about in part because the crusaders wanted their wealth as a means of funding their journey to the Holy Land. ‘A day will surely arrive when my children will come and avenge my blood’. These words were attributed to Christ, and plate 11 in Fighting for the Cross shows the crusaders right at the end of their long journey, in July 1099, storming a Jerusalem at whose heart Christ is shown going through his Passion. It’s not a way of thinking or believing that we today find it easy to empathize with, but it’s endlessly fascinating. And nobody can doubt its historical significance.

Read an excerpt from Fighting for the Cross, and learn more about the book at the Yale University Press website.

Learn more about Norman Housley's teaching and research at his faculty webpage.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jena Pincott's "Do Gentlemen Really Prefer Blondes?"

Jena Pincott has a background in biology and was a production assistant on science documentaries for PBS. She is a former senior editor at Random House, and is the author of Success: Advice for Achieving Your Goals from Remarkably Accomplished People and Healing: Advice for Recovering Your Strength and Spirit from the World's Most Famous Survivors.

She applied the “Page 99 Test” to her new book, Do Gentlemen Really Prefer Blondes?: Bodies, Behavior, and Brains--The Science Behind Sex, Love, and Attraction, and reported the following:

Do Gentlemen Really Prefer Blondes? is a question-and-answer book on the science of love and attraction, so I always welcome readers to flip to random pages or follow their prurient interests. If you happen to land on page ninety-nine you'll be splat in the middle of the answer to the question "Why do men like big breasts?"

The answer, in part:

...Full figured women are roughly three times as likely to get pregnant as women with other body types. (To qualify as big-breasted in the study, the circumference of your torso around your breasts would have to be at least 20 percent larger than it is under your breasts.)

....The symmetry of a woman's breasts also reveals something about her health. Because breasts develop so rapidly during puberty, they're especially sensitive to hormonal disruptions that could make one breast grow much larger than the other and also compromise fertility. Women with asymmetrical breasts have fewer babies on average than do women with symmetrical breasts.

The other hundred or so questions in the book cover a variety of topics: Why do some guys smell better to you than others? Does the Pill affect your taste in men? Can you tell people's sexual orientation by their smell? Why is blushing sexy? Why does creativity get men laid? How do the seasons affect your sex life?

What the big breast question on page ninety-nine has in common with all other questions in the book is one simple idea: To some extent, we all have built-in biases for certain qualities in a lover. Sometimes these preferences are conscious, such as (many) men's unabashed lust for big busts. Others are subtle and under the radar of awareness, such as attraction to a specific person's natural body odor or body language. What I attempt to do -- in a fun, playful way -- in Do Gentlemen Really Prefer Blondes? is to uncover these subtle biases and the evolutionary reasons behind them. To what extent are your genes, hormones, and instincts influencing your love life? And what should you do about it?

For a sample of the text, a complete list of questions, and blog updates, please visit Jena Pincott's website and blog.

--Marshal Zeringue

Phil Zuckerman's "Society Without God"

Phil Zuckerman is associate professor of sociology at Pitzer College. He is the author of Invitation to the Sociology of Religion and Strife in the Sanctuary: Religious Schism in a Jewish Community.

He applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, Society Without God: What the Least Religious Societies Can Tell us About Contentment, and reported the following:

If someone were to only read page 99 of my new book Society Without God: What the Least Religious Societies Can Tell us About Contentment, they would certainly get a main element of my book: that Denmark and Sweden are the least religious nations in the world today. However, they would also miss a great deal of what my book is all about and why I wrote it. Indeed, if someone were to only read page 99, I would feel quite disheartened as an author, and feel like several main ideas had been totally missed.

Ok, so here’s what they would get: a clear articulation of the nature of Scandinavian secularity. As I write on page 99: “For many or even most contemporary Danes and Swedes, religion is not something to be discussed or analyzed, nor is it something to be debated or debunked, nor is it something to be resisted or feared. Rather, it is something quite altogether different: a non-topic. And when religion becomes a non-topic for significant segments of a modern society, we are dealing with an extraordinary social reality: secularity, par excellence.”

That said, here are some key elements of my book that aren’t captured on page 99:

1. The conservative Christian right – along with most strongly religious folk — argue that if a nation doesn’t place God at its center, the result will be societal chaos and misery. The nations of Scandinavia prove this false: God-belief is very weak in Denmark and Sweden, and yet these nations are among the most secure, prosperous, humane, and moral nations on earth.

2. Many theorists have argued that all humans fear death and need existential answers to the meaning of life. And yet millions of relatively secular Danes and Swedes show that this isn’t necessarily true: it is possible to live a full, content life and still accept one’s mortality, and many people can have meaningful lives without religious interpretations of the Big Picture.

3. What is the worldview of men and women who live life without much religion? How do they understand morality, ethics, family life, work, religion, etc.?

4. Why are many European nations so secular, while the USA is so religious?

Points 1-4 are at the very heart of my book, and yet are not even marginally captured in page 99. Nor are the colorful, compelling voices of the many men and women I interviewed — it is their stories and words that make up a significant ingredient of my analysis.

But that said, if you only read page 99 — well, that’s better than nothing!

Read the introduction to Society Without God, and learn more about the book at the publisher's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

William Sharpe's "New York Nocturne"

William Chapman Sharpe is professor of English at Barnard College, Columbia University. He is the author of Unreal Cities and the coeditor of Visions of the Modern City.

He applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, New York Nocturne: The City After Dark in Literature, Painting, and Photography, 1850-1950, and reported the following:

On page 99 of New York Nocturne readers will find themselves not in New York, but London, discovering how James McNeill Whistler forever changed the way we look at the city at night. Though Whistler never saw modern Manhattan bedecked with the diamonds of a million electric lights, we feel the impact of his artistry every time we marvel at the sparkling skyline or the misty glow of a streetlight on a wet evening. His Nocturnes draped a veil of elusive allure over the body of the grimy urban landscape, influencing the way photographers, painters, and poets would depict Manhattan from the 1890s through to the present moment. As my book shows over the course of 400 pages and some 150 images, Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Joseph Stella, Edward Hopper, Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams and many more all learned from Whistler. In turn they taught their audiences to feel wonder and delight at the spectacle of night falling in the artificially lit city. At a time when most people thought that the daytime city was ugly and the nighttime city was a hellish pit of crime and depravity, Whistler’s Nocturnes enabled viewers to see the city as a beautiful form clothed in darkness and bejewelled with light. For Whistler and those who followed, night in the city no longer represented moral danger, but rather an immensely exciting realm of personal and artistic exploration. I first got the idea of studying nocturnal New York from gazing at some Whistlers at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan, so page 99–though only a quarter of the way through the book–is at the heart of it.

Quote: "With their rivers and bridges, pleasure gardens and feux d’artifice, Whistler’s nocturnes occupy an eroticized border area between mastery and submission, such that the infernal chasms and cataclysms of the romantic sublime find their tamed yet tempting counterparts in enveloping mists and looming pylons. Night, as Whistler paints it, does not awe–it invites and embraces."

Read the introduction to New York Nocturne, and learn more about the book at the Princeton University Press website.

--Marshal Zeringue

William Conescu's "Being Written"

You start reading a blog entry on a first novel, Being Written by William Conescu, and it’s written in the second person, and you’re not sure how you feel about that. But you read the second sentence, and it occurs to you that there might be some reason the author made this choice. So you pick up Being Written – which, conveniently, sits beside you on your desk – and you look at page one, and you see that the opening is written in the second person. There’s a guy at a bar. He hears a scratching sound in the distance. It’s the scratching of “the author’s pencil.” Some woman across the room is “being written.”

Okay. You flip ahead to page 99 – you’re forever flipping to page 99 – but this section is not written in the second person. The font is even different. Like this:

“Does he deal drugs or something?”

“No, no. Definitely not.”

“Then what?”

Jon doesn’t want to go down this path. It’s been a long night already. He fishes two glasses out of the sink and sets them on the drying rack. “They’re getting past some things,” he says, but Daniel looks unsatisfied. So Jon adds, “You might be familiar with one of those things, hmm?”

It takes a moment for this to sink in, but then the color rises in Daniel’s freckled cheeks. His ears actually turn magenta. It’s amazing.

You skim the back of the book and see that Daniel is the only one who knows he’s a character in a book that’s being written. A minor character, in fact, if the jacket copy can be trusted. You read on:

“But,” Jon continues, “like I said, they’ll be fine. They always are. They’re good together, they really are. You should have seen them in school and when they had their act. It was like they could read each other’s minds.”

“So why do you think Graham doesn’t want to go on the auditions?” Daniel asks.

“Maybe he’s not ready,” Jon replies, returning to the sink. “I think he gets nervous being in front of other people. Truly performing. It’s not the same as backing up Delia.”

“Yeah,” Daniel says quietly, and then, “Do you miss acting?”

Jon eyes Daniel through the mirror behind the bar. “No,” he says. “It’s not an easy life.” Jon rinses out the martini shaker before a sigh escapes him and he turns back around. “You don’t need to help me, Daniel. I’m the happiest person in this little group.”

Daniel says nothing, but the color rises to his cheeks again.

“I hear Monty’s getting a promotion,” Jon adds.

“Is he?”

“How about that?”

Daniel sure blushes a lot. Seems like he’s worked his way into this social circle of artsy types who are being written, and he’s interfering with their lives to try to get himself a bigger part and make himself integral to their story. (You’re an extremely perceptive reader, by the way.) And here he is on page 99 in everyone’s business, so something must be going right. And wrong. There’s not a wealth of love coming from Jon. The book – a paperback original from Harper Perennial, how handy that it’s sitting here – alternates back and forth between chapters of “the book” written in the third person and Daniel’s second-person perception of being written into it.

You hold the book up to your nose and sniff. Smells like something between a literary thriller and a dark comedy. (You have an extremely active sense of smell.) Okay, you’re kind of curious. Plus it’s a new author who seems like a reasonably good guy. (You’re an extremely sensitive person.) You’ll give the guy a break and pick up his novel, maybe mention it to a friend if you enjoy it.

That's William Conescu’s take on the “Page 99 Test” applied to his new novel, Being Written.

Browse inside Being Written, and learn more about the book and author at William Conescu's website.

William Conescu was born in New York and raised in New Orleans. He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and earned an MFA in Creative Writing at North Carolina State University. His short stories have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, New Letters, Green Mountains Review, and other publications.

--Marshal Zeringue

Charlie Huston's "Every Last Drop"

Charlie Huston is the author of the Henry Thompson Trilogy (Caught Stealing, Six Bad Things, and A Dangerous Man) and a standalone, The Shotgun Rule. His first three Joe Pitt novels are Already Dead, No Dominion, and Half the Blood in Brooklyn.

He applied the “Page 99 Test” to the latest Joe Pitt novel, Every Last Drop, and reported the following:

Having applied the Page 69 Test to one of my previous Joe Pitt novels, I’ve returned to endure the trials of the Page 99 Test for the latest Joe Pitt: Every Last Drop.

Let’s take a quick look at what Mr. Ford has to say just so we’re clear on the nature of the test.

"Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you." --Ford Madox Ford

Seems pretty clear. The only part of Ford’s proposition that one might quibble over is just what he means by “quality.” Is he speaking of what Merriam Webster refers to in its primary definition as “peculiar and essential character” or the secondary “degree of excellence”? Which is to say, does he mean that page 99 will reveal the nature of the book we’re looking at, or that is will reveal whether or not the book is any damn good?

Let’s not bicker about it and all agree that he probably meant that page 99 will reveal a books “peculiar and essential character”. That has the added benefit of encompassing the “degree of excellence” as well. So, two birds, one stone.

Cutting to the chase, here’s page 99 of Every Last Drop.

ation, but that causes mutation. And mutation leads to adaptation over time. So, these guys, they’ve been using visible light pulses. And it works. It.

She holds up her cigarette, wiggles it, creating a jagged stream of smoke.

-It vibrates a virus, physically disrupts the virus shell, this thing called the capsid. It cripples the virus it affects. Virus can’t function, and dies. So.

Her eyes are big, staring a million miles.

-The Vyrus, your Vyrus, goes haywire when exposed to solar UVA, it mutates. But not adaptive mutations. Or not that we can see because it happens way too fast. But, but, maybe we can find a wave of radiation, a visible wavelength to shatter the Vyrus’ capsid? It’s so, it’s way outside the box, but the Vyrus isn’t in the box, so this is the kind of stuff we have to. I mean.

She stares further, going away from the room, deep inside some other place.

-It is so fucking cool.

She takes a big drag.

-It’s like, like being a pioneer. Like none of the rules apply and you can try anything. Anything. Nothing is out of bounds. And. Oh, and I said about computer models. The good thing about having too many people here, it gives us a really good pool to draw samples from. And, because the Vyrus, it does mutate. Radically. From person to person. I mean, we’ve got a couple people here who infected other people here. And even then, the same strain passing from host to host, it mutates. But within a range. I think. So we can draw samples. And like I said, the Vyrus is a total puss, and if you mishandle a specimen it croaks like that, but if you do it right we have time to log the mutation. So we’re creating a database of mutations. Like, we can look and see its favorite tricks. How it hides. How it defends itself. Maybe get an idea why some

So we got a lot of dialogue. Very common in my books. And they’re talking about the virus that causes vampirism in my mythology. Central to the series. Aaand… Well, that’s about it. It doesn’t deal with either of the major plot points of the book, involving Joe’s girl and a huge stockpile of blood. Nor does Joe, the protagonist and narrator, have a voice here. We don’t see any of the landscape of NYC, always a major component of these books. And Joe doesn’t hurt anyone. So, is the “peculiar and essential character” of the book revealed here?

No, not at all.

But the fault is not in the page, it’s in the test.

No single page in any book is ever going to reveal that book’s quality, however you choose to define that word or apply the test. What it may or may not tell you is if it’s a book you might want to read. The “peculiar and essential character” of anything will never be revealed in a fragment. You want to get at the heart of something, you’re going to have to get intimate with it.

But, if you’re looking for a quick test to find out if you think you might want to someday develop some intimacy with a book, you know, have a cup of coffee and chat and see if there’s a spark, you could start with the Page 99 Test. However, I’d recommend just beginning at the beginning and applying the Page 1 Test. If you turn to page 2, that generally means page 1 was at least pretty good. After that you can take it one page at a time until you’re ready to commit.

Read an excerpt from Every Last Drop, and learn more about the book and author at Charlie Huston's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ellen Prager's "Chasing Science at Sea"

Ellen J. Prager is currently the chief scientist at the world’s only undersea research station, Aquarius Reef Base, in the Florida Keys, and a freelance writer. Among her publications are The Oceans and Furious Earth: The Science and Nature of Earthquakes, Volcanoes, and Tsunamis; a series of children’s books including Sand, Volcano, and Earthquakes with the National Geographic Society; and a children’s novel, Adventure on Dolphin Island.

She applied the “Page 99 Test” to her new book, Chasing Science at Sea: Racing Hurricanes, Stalking Sharks, and Living Undersea with Ocean Experts, and reported the following:

With consideration to Ford Madox Ford's statement "Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you." My answer has to be a politically astute, yet aggravatingly vague answer, all to appropriate just before an election – Yes and No.

Okay, I’m going to cheat just a little bit and include one sentence from page 98 as well:

“Our experiences and what we have learned from them far outweigh any of the discomforts or frustrations that we have had to endure. And when those moments of wonder, discovery, or scientific enlightenment do happen, it makes all the obstacles we’ve dealt with seem inconsequential and simply fodder for funny stories over cocktails. But surely it is worth it, both personally and for the invaluable knowledge we gain about the sea.”

Actually, that is all there is on page 99 as it is at the end of the chapter entitled, Overcoming Obstacles. While it is not exactly illustrative of the whole (there are only two full sentences on the page after all), this passage does reflect in many ways what I have tried to do with the book.

Science is often described as a boring, methodical process devoid of fun, adventure, or humor. And the scientist is still widely thought of as that white-coated, gray haired stereotype whose personality must have been removed in conjunction with their obtaining a PhD. The stories in Chasing Science at Sea are from my own field experiences and those of my colleagues, and they are solid evidence to refute those last two statements!

It is in facing and overcoming obstacles that much of the humor, adventure, and wonder come into play in science, and in particular fieldwork. From equipment stealing sea lions to actual thieves along with hurricanes, sharks, dangerously bad decision-making, laughable predicaments, amazing animal life, and unexpected surprises, ocean science has it all. I hope readers of the book will come away with a feeling for why my colleagues and I love what we do (some might say it is an obsession), find the stories fun and engaging, while also learning about the wonders of the sea, how science really works, and the importance of experiencing nature firsthand.

Read an excerpt from Chasing Science at Sea, and learn more about the book and author at Ellen Prager's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Christopher Fettweis' "Losing Hurts Twice as Bad"

Christopher J. Fettweis is an Assistant Professor in the Political Science Department at Tulane University. For the last three years, he taught strategy at the US Naval War College in Newport, RI.

He applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, Losing Hurts Twice as Bad: The Four Stages to Moving Beyond Iraq, and reported the following:

My book deals with the likely domestic and international consequences of the war in Iraq. Page 99 is in the section about the effect of the war on oil markets; here it is.

The day that the war started, the twentieth of March, 2003, was hectic for commodity traders. Investors were nervous, and their anxiety drove the price of oil up over thirty dollars a barrel before it finished the day at $28.61. Traders told New York Times reporters that they expected the price to settle “at $25 to $32 during – and perhaps after – the war.” That prediction, as it turns out, was a bit optimistic. In May 2008, the price of a barrel of crude oil broke $120 for the first time. Worldwide demand rose during those intervening five years, to be sure, but it hardly quadrupled. The remarkable rise in the price of oil is directly related to the war, which helped to weaken the dollar and caused serious instability in the market.

Oil is traded on the futures market, which means that its price today is in part a reflection of what investors think it will be worth tomorrow. The insecurity that the war has brought has both discouraged exploration for new supplies in the Middle East and added a “security premium” onto every barrel bought and sold. If there had been no invasion of Iraq, the price would more accurately reflect the forces of supply and demand, and would probably be about half of what it is today.

The implications of expensive oil for the global economy are likely to be profound. Petroleum producing states, many of which are not the world’s most democratic or friendly to U.S. interests, are making more money than ever before. The war has been a godsend for Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. For consuming nations, however, the news is grim. Historically speaking, U.S. economic performance has always been inversely related to the price of oil. As prices rise, productivity and growth fall. When prices are low, like in the mid-to-late 1990s, the U.S. economy expands. The next few years are likely to be very difficult economic times for the United States.

Americans may soon look back on the days when they were paying $3.50 for a gallon of gasoline with nostalgic fondness, because all projections have the price rising steadily over the next few years. If the war were to end quickly, much of that security premium would go away, and prices would probably fall to some degree. But they will never go back to where they were before this war boosted them through the roof.

Read more about Losing Hurts Twice as Bad at the publisher's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Michael J. Agovino's "The Bookmaker"

Michael J. Agovino has written for a wide range of publications and online sites, including The New York Times, Esquire, GQ, Salon, Elle, and The New York Observer.

He applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, The Bookmaker: A Memoir of Money, Family, and Luck From the Utopian Outskirts of New York City, and reported the following:

Any time I hear rules about writing—or god help us, tests, especially tests—I tend to ignore them or do the opposite, all due respect to FMF. In fact, I was hoping that page 99 would be a photograph. This would have given me an opportunity to talk about my use of photography, which is quite different from most other memoirs I’d say. That will have to wait for another day.

Instead, page 99 in my book is only a half-page of text being it’s the last page of the chapter entitled “Westchester County, 1972.” But it does illustrate an important theme throughout the book: the dream of home ownership. That and dreams unfulfilled.

Two years before, my family moved into a socialist housing experiment on the periphery of New York City. Co-op City, it was called, the idea of the famous/infamous builder Robert Moses, one of his last, or as I call it, his last big mistake. It was made up of 35 skyscrapers, almost identical, and housed up to 60,000 people. It was the largest housing complex in America. It had been an American-history themed park called Freedomland, which was even larger than Disneyland.

My mother never wanted to move there. She thought, as many early critics did, that it was not only a visually depressing place but that its left-wing ideology was overbearing. My father, on the other hand, was a union man who earned a modest income for the New York City Department of Welfare, and it was he who controlled the purse strings. The price, of course, was ridiculously right. He told my mother at the time, “If we don’t like it we’ll move.” He worked a second job, my dad, as a bookie, and on top of that gambled on sports. He won money, and then he would lose money. Win, lose; win, lose. Money in, money out. So maybe there would be a lucky streak, a windfall, and we would be able to afford to move.

After two years of my mother hounding my father, telling him how much she hated this monstrosity of towers, he got fed up and said to her: “Then go find a house.” And sure enough she did, an English country house, not even that far away, in Mt. Vernon, Westchester County, my mother’s dream suburb.

But my father never wanted suburbia; it wasn’t his dream. This was part of their ongoing ideological battle throughout the book, and their lives: owning vs. renting, suburbia vs. city.

At the end of this chapter, on page 99, my mother gives up, at least temporarily, on this dream of the house. “Well,” she said, “at least let’s go to Italy.” And so on we went, from Eero Saarinen’s TWA Building, to the land of our roots.

Read an excerpt from The Bookmaker and watch Matt Lauer's interview with Michael J. Agovino.

Learn more about The Bookmaker at the publisher's website.

--Marshal Zeringue