This book has been at least seven years in coming. It was about then I first read “The Cider House Rules” by John Irving. I was one of my first real exposures to what you might call “serious literature” outside a school setting and I was blown away. I loved the book so much that I told myself I had to do something that good someday. I tried a couple of times but couldn’t seem to find the right story. Then with all this publicity about gay marriage because of Prop 8 in California and similar amendments in other states I started to hear a lot on the subject. What I heard from the opposing side always sounded ridiculous to me, most of it along the lines of, “If we let gay people marry, next they’ll let a man marry his dog!” It was so silly that I finally found something I wanted to say. Looking back at “The Cider House Rules” and also “The World According to Garp” they gave me the solution to how I could make a statement while still telling a good story. So it let me achieve two important goals at once.