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This book is nonfiction. The story is true, and the people are real. I have occasionally changed the names of characters, including “Charles Monet” and “Peter Cardinal.” When I have changed a name, I state so in the text.
The dialogue comes from the recollections of the participants, and has been extensively crosschecked. At certain moments in the story, I describe the stream of a person’s thoughts. In such instances, I am basing my narrative on interviews with the subjects in which they have recalled their thoughts often repeatedly, followed by fact-checking sessions in which the subjects confirmed their recollections. If you ask a person, “What were you thinking?” you may get an answer that is richer and more revealing of the human condition than any stream of thoughts a novelist could invent. I try to see through people’s faces into their minds and listen through their words into their lives, and what I find there is beyond imagining.
RICHARD PRESTON
