​The cold depths of north-country lakes water-marked me as a child in Duluth, Minnesota. When I was six, my father left the family, and my mother moved my two sisters and me to California. The planet-scale power of the Pacific surged into my life. As a girl, I rode my bike and traipsed through the rusty, fishy, ocean-worn alleys of Ocean Beach. I clambered over miles of tan clay cliffs, gulped more sea breeze than food, slunk through salt-thick fog, flew out of cresting swells toward sun-whitened sky, and tossed among green bubbles in the pure force of broken waves. A swimmer, a fisher, a body-surfer, a seaweed eater, I fell in love with a hodad from the high, dry mesas of New Mexico. We raised two beautiful, blooming hybrids. When motherhood repressed too severely, I binged on episodes of dictionary reading — like eating black licorice in private: slightly shameful, but strong, sweet, and salty. Shameful secrets led to fiction writing.