A: When you look at the Sixties, 1968 was a pivotal year. Before that, people felt optimistic; after that, there was a lot more grittiness, fear, and violence. The point where things spiral out of control for my characters is exactly the point where things become chaotic in the Sixties. Boston was a young town in a liberal state. I wanted a place where these people would be less an exception and more the norm.

Q. The 1960s occupy a rarefied place in American history. Why does that particular era continue to intrigue our society?

A: Part of it is nostalgia. A lot of culturally significant and personally important things happened and a very good time was had by a huge number of people who are have since gotten older, wealthier and have a lot more time on their hands. So in some ways, Sixties nostalgia is the intellectual correlative to listening to a good oldies station. An argument can be made that the Christian right and neoconservative movements owe their existence to the excesses of the Sixties. As Karen Armstrong has noted, the U.S. has always been prone to extremism and apocalyptic enthusiasm. Most of our country’s political and business leaders made their careers in the aftermath of the Sixties – some by responding to the missteps of radicals – the shrill rhetoric, the militant protests, the bombings, the flagrant moral excesses, and the tremendous fear that groups like the Black Panthers and the SLA inspired. At the same time, civil rights improved for blacks and women and for a while anyway, it seemed like stewardship for Planet Earth and our environment trumped or at least pulled even with corporate interests.

Q. The abduction of Patty Hearst serves as a frame story for the novel. Why did you decide to ground your fiction in such a well-known real-life event?

A: The Hearst abduction was the first protracted live televised media disaster, where reporters camped out in front of someone’s house whose loved one was in mortal danger, waiting for them to sigh, or tear up, or break down. Nowadays, media are dispatched to cover sad stories and bizarre events that result in unspeakable sadness for families every week.

In 1975, the nation and twelve jurors held Patty Hearst responsible for crimes she committed after being kidnapped and tortured. Twenty years later, a woman who spilled a steaming hot cup of coffee in her lap, sued McDonald’s won $2.9MM. Today, you drive down the highway and there are billboards that say, “Injured? Call us!” The Hearst saga makes us consider the degree we take responsibility for our actions. In a novel that explores changes that have occurred in our society over this period, the Patty Hearst story is enduring. I also couldn’t resist the irony of a real-life terrorist group using the granddaughter of William Randolph Hearst, the media mogul who pretty much invented sensationalist journalism, to get tens of millions of dollars of free advertising.

Q: BACKWARD-FACING MAN also has great appeal to readers who didn’t experience the Sixties. Why?

A: I don't think you had to be alive then to appreciate the significance of the Sixties. It's influence is everywhere – people whose values were formed during that period are parents, teachers, CEOs, leaders in government, criminal organizations, even the military. It's too easy to say that what people did was good or bad – what happened then has shaped our culture. Also, this is not just a book about the Sixties. It's about human nature and how the choices we make impact our lives over time. There’s criminal activity, family betrayal, unrequited love, business, politics and some big surprises.

Q. What kind of historical research did you do in writing this book?

A: I interviewed retired FBI agents and read a lot about the Sixties, particularly from and about radical political groups, memoirs, and historical accounts. Even though the SLA (Symbionese Liberation Army) and the kidnapping of Patty Hearst was in the news for almost two years – as big as or bigger than the OJ Simpson trial -- I read numerous accounts so I could render it faithfully. I also read all about William Randolph Hearst and the beginnings of media and spent some time at the Museum of Radio and Television in New York watching Gilligan’s Island episodes I’d somehow missed.

Q. Lorraine Nadia is a quasi-mystical character in BACKWARD-FACING MAN, with frank sexual appetites of her own, a radical political sensibility, and utter devotion to her daughter, Stardust. How is she representative of the feminist forces at work in the late 1960s and early 1970s?

A: The radical left and the Sixties counter-culture was decidedly un-feminist when it began. After the Democratic National Convention in the summer of 1968, women began to be critical of the movement and their personal relationships and to demand more respect and authority. Because of her pregnancy and the circumstances surrounding Frederick’s and her transgressions, Lorraine had to take another path. It was difficult, but she did so, in my opinion, with grace, determination and aplomb.

Q. Did your experience as president of a manufacturing company play any part in your inclusion of a manufacturing company in the book?

A: People in business walk a fine line. A corporation is a legal entity, which most of the time, shields the people managing it from being responsible for what they do. A culture develops in a place of work that is different from each individual’s personality & values. In that way, there’s a little Stockholm Syndrome taking place in everybody who works in an organization. If you’ve ever been in a factory, you quickly realize that it’s a little harder to ignore the consequences of what you do and to cover your tracks. I also wanted to write about what happens when family members work together. Tolstoy might have said, “Every family business is unhappy in its own way.”

Q. Can you discuss your process as a first-time novelist? How did this book come about?

At age forty, after spending about twenty years in business, I got my Masters in Fine Arts from Bennington College and quit corporate life to consult, teach and write. In 2000, I had the idea for Backward-Facing Man, which started as a prose poem that grew into a short story that became a novella. In 2002, I decided to bail from business and focused full-time on the writing. Last fall, I completed the manuscript and found an agent, who forwarded the manuscript to Dan Halpern at Ecco.

Q. What is your next project?

I’m trying to figure out what happens when a doctor, a dominatrix, and a psychologist become entangled.