Upstairs at the Square

Many people have asked me about the title of the book, which stems from the novel’s preface. In it, I describe a series of deaths due to erratic lightning strikes on rooftops of downtown Manhattan. The reason for this meteorological event is that the World Trade Center used to serve as the island’s chief lightning conductor. When the towers went down, lightning could no longer be safely routed and was now capable of striking anywhere or anyone in the city. Sadly, this phenomenon isn’t entirely the work of fiction. After 9/11, a member of the New York band Gang Gang Dance named Nathan Maddox was struck and killed by lightning on a Lower East Side rooftop during a storm. I barely knew Nathan but was close with his bandmates. In fact, it was band member Brian DeGraw’s artworks in 2002 that first alerted me to this connection between 9/11 and lightning.