While in Rome, I will work on my novel in progress, How Much Water Does a Man Need? Centered on the construction of a massive dam project by the Army Corps of Engineers in my birthplace of Nicholas County, West Virginia, the novel examines political corruption, land use, the United Mine Workers of America, and the rise and fall of the Great Society, as seen through the prism of a single, troubled life. Another strand of the novel places it in the greater context of the struggle between anticommunist liberals and procommunist forces in the first half of the twentieth century, examining how global political forces shape the private lives and social crises of characters who live in distant, even isolated areas, seemingly far from the main stage of history and the centers of power, commerce, and media. History too often overlooks rural places; I seek to correct this omission.