At Knox College, creative writing majors write a senior thesis, and they can have an “outside reader.” Chad Simpson emailed me and asked if I would be the outside reader for someone who was writing interrelated stories set in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. I’d get paid a little, too.

Sure.

And this student was Sam Martone. Son of Michael. Famed native son of Indiana.

Sure!

Chad himself is a former Hoosier and lived for a time in Logansport, Indiana, which is just a few miles from Peru.

Small world.