Dangerous Neighbors

Yesterday, returning at last to the Centennial novel, I struggled to reclaim my footing—to go back in time to 1876. Nothing rushes writing. No short cuts can be taken. I had to sit again, settle in again, to the clatter on Broad Street, to the buildings, no longer there, to the strange interiors of spectacle buildings that turned Philadelphia into a near-circus for a year.

The vendors are out, roasting their chestnuts. There is a hawk with blood-colored feathers on the parapet of a slanted roof.