A MAROON FORD WAS A GHOSTLY PRESENCE

One day, I took a ride out to the Quabbin Reservoir and got stuck behind an antique maroon Ford, which seemed cool and odd. A maroon Ford makes an appearance in the pages of CASCADE. When I think of old cars, I don’t automatically think maroon, but there it was, and I was behind it for quite a few miles. (I’d made the car maroon in the book because I am always trying to make my details vivid, concrete. But really, when I think of old cars, I think black.)

Much later, after I’d finished writing the book, and my wonderful agent sold it, Penguin’s art department was working on designing the cover. They originally thought it would be good to use old postcards in the design. They had acquired some old cards randomly, off of eBay, etc. When I saw this one, with the maroon car, I thought, “Wow, cool coincidence.” But what they’d sent me wasn’t the whole postcard—it was just the photo. The “Greetings from” part cropped out.

A month or so later, when we were deciding on art for the inside pages, I asked about that maroon car photo. It represented how I imagined Cascade. At that point, Penguin sent the whole card, and that was when I saw that the photo was from Belchertown, MA.

The Quabbin Reservoir’s legal address is Belchertown, MA.

There’s not much of a point to all this, except to shiver a bit.