When I started writing The Garden of What Was and Was Not, a working title at the time, I was inspired by two world changing events that happened in my own lifetime. The first was the assassination of John Kennedy. That killing erased my generations illusions about the American Dream and opened doors to the counterculture, hippies and a revolution we won without being credited. The second was the tragedy of September 11th, 2001. I experienced some of it at the scene. I worked just a few blocks from the World Trade Center, felt the first plane collide into the North Tower and watched it burning when the next airliner filled the plaza with an explosion of pink-gray smoke. My generation stretched deep and long between both events, and I wanted to tell the story of what it was like to be there and at so many stops between.