This week's story, “The Luck of Kokura,” is about a hedge-fund trader who has left his wife and child—and a financial scandal—behind him in New York, fleeing the city by Greyhound bus. The story, which is excerpted from your forthcoming novel, “Lake Success,” opens as the trader wakes up in a former colleague's Atlanta apartment. Did you always know that you would remove this character, Barry, from his familiar surroundings? Why did you choose Atlanta as a city for him to wake up in?
Much like Barry, I went across the country by Greyhound, a melancholy but very instructive experience. I travelled roughly from June through September of 2016, the election year that changed America. After the Greyhound left the Northeast, many people I met seemed to be telling me that Hillary was going down in flames, which, back then, I thought was preposterous. “The Luck of Kokura” captures one such scene when Barry is instructed on the new American reality by the locals in an Atlanta bar. If you want to try to figure out America, get on the Hound.
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