On the way home from LaCrosse, I passed through Madison, Wisconsin, and I had the urge to stop to Ann Packer’s house. It would be the proper way to express my appreciation for her book, and if she had her Christmas lights up already, it might lend a spooky ethereal effect if they blinked through streamers of Charmin.
Silly me! I remembered then that she lives in Northern California and only writes “authentic” novels about Wisconsinites who only come alive when they leave Wisconsin for cosmopolitan locales. Maybe I could have thrown a perfect Brett Favre spiral and one-hopped a roll to northern California if I bounced it just right in Colorado, but odds were it’d hit the eastern side of the Rockies and flutter hopelessly down, leaving her home unscathed.
It was a long drive home. I had a lot of time to think.
