An Afternoon with Jessica Francis Kane

Every now and then, an author whose book I loved emerges from her brilliant pages and becomes a correspondent, an email friend.  That has been the case with Jessica Francis Kane, whose The Report is an immaculate work of fiction—bright, sensitive, complex, provocative.  I found the book almost by accident at this year's BEA.  I read it in a matter of days.  I enthusiastically endorsed the novel here, and Jessica and I began a correspondence that I have treasured. 

Today, Jessica came to town—or to a town thirty minutes down the road—and kept an entire coffee shop in her thrall while she answered questions put forth by the proprietor of Wolfgang Books, the sort of innovative independent bookstore that makes me proud (once again) of the Independents.  It was, in all ways, a lovely afternoon—an affirmation of all the good that still percolates up and through fine books.