He Had Been Granted His Life's Wish-but

There Was A Very Serious Communist Strain Among American Intellectuals Before The War. America Was A More Tolerant Place In Those Days, And Communists Were Not Treated As Pariahs. That Ended With The Mccarthy Era.

My Favorite Period Is World War Ii, And I'm In The Middle Of Writing My Fourth Novel Set In That Era.

I Am Very Fond Of Edith Wharton. She's Quite High Brow But Also A Great Storyteller. My Favorite Is 'the House Of Mirth.' I Also Like 'the Reef.

Most Of My Stories Have Some Basis In Fact.

I Went And Looked At One Of These Great Cathedrals One Day, And I Was Blown Away By It. From There I Became Interested In How Cathedrals Were Built, And From There I Became Interested In The Society That Built The Medieval Cathedral. It Occurred To Me At Some Point That The Story Of The Building Of A Cathedral Could Be A Great Popular Novel.