Kal Roth has spent most of his adult life in rooms where people argue about love and faith — listening for the sentence underneath the sentence, the question hiding inside the accusation. It turns out that if you do that long enough, you start hearing it everywhere: in diners at two in the morning, in study halls thick with old arguments, on highways where the radio has given up and there is nothing left to do but think.

Destiny's Cannonball came out of all of that. It was written early in the mornings and late at night, in the borrowed hours of a busy life — scribbled in margins, argued out loud, written and rewritten until its characters stopped listening to him and started talking back. It is a book about a young man who is supposed to believe, set in a city that is changing and a time that is growing dark.

Kal lives in New York with his family, an unreasonable number of books, and at least one unfinished argument at all times. He answers reader mail personally and considers a good question the highest form of compliment.

You can reach him on the contact page, or join the launch list to ride along to October 20.