That Rapp, the author of the 2007 memoir "Poster Child," an account of growing up with a disability, would write about Ronan was a foregone conclusion: "Just as I had written through every experience, euphoric or horrific, throughout my life, I began to document the daily happenings of my son's short life.
That, and his side's excellent first half: a 45 minutes of football as good as any from them all season, written through with confidence, panache and a high attacking line which suggested no fear.
You will learn that an agent or editor can't predict the future (though they might claim they can), and that their choices are guided by taste and desire the same as your book was written through the pursuit of your taste and desire.
As a result, Mr. Cabnet said, casting was an unusually crucial step, and not just in terms of finding people who will say the lines as written or make it through the entire run.
So if the stimulus plan goes through as written, expect atmospheric and marine researchers to look again to NIST for help.
Mirror's follow-up, Stalker, is if anything less accessible, although it's a great brooding road movie of the soul, The Wizard of Oz as written by Samuel Beckett and filtered through woozy Kodachrome.
We push on south, back into Croatia, stopping briefly in stylish Dubrovnik, then onwards, as I write, through Montenegro, heading for our next stop, Albania.
"As I wrote through deeply sad stories, I found that hope was in the telling," she says on her publisher's Web site, explaining how she retrieved and reimagined family fables.
Whether or not the prophecy came true in his lifetime, it was borne out in Beckett, who listened to the cycle over and over in a recording by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Gerald Moore, "shivering," as he once wrote, "through the grim journey again".
Because I run a charity, and also have children, I don't have one of those perfect writer's dens where I can just go to my desk as soon as I get up and write through the day.
