"Yes, Philadelphia, a hotbed of freedom, she said, pulling the trigger."

Sometime you read a book so good you just have to shout it.

This is really just a short story - Devotion - with an essay about the events the author encounter as she wrote it and another essay about why write she writes at all. All the triggers she encounters show up in her story. It's a bit like going behind the Wizard's curtain. It still works.

The triggers - the Estonian refugees, 16 year old figure skater, the eerie man - are not what the story is about. It's about freedom - a new world. In an old world story the girl would have submitted to the man who keeps her. She would have given up her devotion - skating - for school or for Olympic glory. She would found forgiveness inside a church. Devotion is a new world story, the name he calls her Philadelphia is old moving to the new and through the story process the new moves back to the old as Smith travels from New York to France.

Devotion's near past setting that's still vague enough to seem like a fantasy tale as the main character's mundane work takes on existential significance reminded me of The Old Man and The Sea.