While in Rome, I’ll be working on a novel set in New York during the blizzard of February 1978. The story focuses on the residents of a building on the Upper West Side—two families, in particular, whose intertwined histories are scrutinized by a narrator trying to assemble a working model of her own past. On the night of the blizzard, she experienced a strange act of communion, the examination of which she believes will help her cope with a more recent event, the death of her husband.