“My room is lined with books, most of them stacked in precarious piles on the bowing bookshelves Louis assembled years ago. They are filled with other people’s stories, and I’ve spent my life disappearing into them. Sometimes, when the nights are dark and silent and I’m alone, I wonder if I would have survived without the escape their pages offered me from reality. Then again, perhaps they just gave me an excuse to duck out of my own life.”