NIGHT I started working on this book with the thought that God isn"t dead, and it isn"t that he doesn"t love us, either. It"s just that he wants to give us room enough to be ourselves, even if that means we screw up. If he didn"t we"d be nothing but children, and it"d stunt us. I ended up telling a story that isn"t that, exactly -- but that"s where and what it comes from. That"s what"s this book -- the story of a man with a forbidding legacy and a destiny he can"t imagine growing great enough to face -- means to be. -- Alan Rodgers