the Fall of Alice K.

The Fall of Alice K. started with a teenage male character struggling to understand his relationship to his own rural, Dutch Calvinist tradition.

The male character simply didn’t harmonize with the material, and so Alice K. was born, inspired by brilliant and witty young women I have known, some as relatives and some as students.

The fact that all of my grand children are bi-racial no doubt had much to do with Alice’s struggle as she too finds herself crossing the boundaries of race and culture in her first love.