For twenty-five years I ran long distance, but until I left my university post, I never realized how much of that running had been about running away.  My characters tend to run long distance as well, figuratively speaking at least, and they too learn that running away is not the same as being free.  In Who Can Know the Heart, three focal characters have serious flight issues: Henry — Soren’s father also known as Wizard, Soren — Sara’s mother, and Sara. The fight/flight impulse at the center of the novel is connected to complex father/daughter and mother/daughter relationships and is, therefore, linked with who characters tell themselves they are. Here, flight is the embodiment of panic and desire – coming to terms with regrets, not having regrets, wanting something to regret, and finally learning that freedom, though it may not yet be realized, is already a condition of the heart.