Although this book is a work of literature, any resemblance to actual people, events, or locales is deliberate. No names have been changed; the identities of the not-so-innocent are verifiable. What happens behind the scenes, however, is a different matter—incidental details, behavioral quirks, and philosophical musings are either full-blown figments of the author’s imagination or are amalgams of truth and fantasy, transmuted in the poetic crucible.