I snuck into a chair while a friend was describing how growing up under a repressive regime infects and perverts children. He wasn’t talking about his own life; he was commenting on the selection for our graphic novel reading group—a program of our wonderful Evanston Public Library. I was late, and I hate showing up…

Most days he’s not there, standing just this side of the traffic light, his flimsy cardboard sign asking for help for a person down on his luck. When I do see him on my way home from big-boxville, I always pay more attention to the letters—the childish scrawl—on his sign than I do to him.…

I can tell that a novel is top-rate when I start praying for the characters. And when, on finishing the book, I sit immobilized, loathe to break the spell of the world it has brought me into. A world drawn from our own but given a shape and meaning that allows us to see something…