The Sugar House

This book is for three women who changed my life:

Michele Slung, by asking a single question Joan Jacobson, by asking for another page and Melody Simmons, by daring me to dream a dream.

A Baltimorean is not merely John Doe, an isolated individual of Homo sapiens, exactly like every other John Doe. He is John Doe of a certain place-of Baltimore, of a definite home in Baltimore. It was not by accident that all the peoples of the Western world, very early in their history, began distinguishing their best men by adding of this or that place to their names.

– H. L. Mencken, Evening Sun, February 16, 1925

Never get caught with a dead girl or a live boy.

– A political maxim of unknown origin