In the Books and Writers group in which I participate, someone asked about ideas for characters. I wrote back that mine usually just seemed to appear on the page. That was mostly true, but the conversation caused me to remember that initially the inspiration for the primary characters in the current manuscript occurred years ago after my parents died and my sisters and I were cleaning out their house. My father’s old tin lunch box was still on the top shelf of their closet. It held a wide assortment of memorabilia: gas ration stamps, layoff papers from the Seaboard Railroad, birth certificates, report cards, and a cracked wedding band. It was the only thing I wanted. I loved it as a child, and now it represented taking apart my childhood. Over time it began to bear witness, embodying Henry, Soren, and Sara’s lost innocence, if not loss itself, catalyzing complex identity formations.