Some stories begin with imagination. Others begin with a place. For me, ZANA began with both. Before ZANA became the title of my novel, Zana was the name of a real East Texas community in San Augustine County, Texas—a place connected to an area forever changed by the creation of the reservoir we now know as Sam Rayburn Reservoir. That history made me think about something much bigger: What happens to the stories of ordinary people when the landscape around them changes? From
