In a 1997 interview with Russell Ingram and Mark Ledbetter, Lewis Nordan discussed the relevance of one particular figurative image-lake water as a black mirror-that appears repeatedly throughout his fiction. "When I was a boy," Nordan said,

I would look down into the water and know its depths held scary things, like those big ol' alligator gar as long as our fishing boats. The water held beautiful things as well, bluegills and crappie, but none of it was visible. When you looked into that water, all you saw was yourself and whatever was behind you, like the trees or the clouds. What I am doing in the elemental story I mean to tell is to have each character face the mirrored water, and before the end of the story be beneath its surface to confront all of its joys and all of its terrors.

Lewis Alonzo Nordan was born...