As regular readers know, I have been reading, and deeply enjoying, the new Daniel Taylor novel Death Comes for the Deconstructionist, which is a metaphysical mystery — a detective novel that delves into the nature of existence in a highly accessible and challenging way. Imagine my shock last night to be lying in bed reading the book and to come across this passage:

“Dickie was a wonderful athlete, you know. He was good at anything he tried. He used to say he wanted to be a coach someday. Said he thought it would be great to have a job where he could work with kids and be outside. A lot of people were surprised, in fact, when he decided to go to college. You know, not so many kids went to college back then. We lived in a small town near the river in Louisiana. St. Francis can’t have been more than fifteen-hundred when we were growing up, even smaller now. …”

I live in a small town near the river in Louisiana; the town is called St. Francisville. We have a little more than 1,500 people living here.

What are the odds?!

I wrote to Dan Taylor, who said that he has never been to St. Francisville, but that he needed to set part of the narrative in a Mississippi River town. He just happened upon St. Francisville on a map. Because a horrible deed, one that’s key to the plot (I won’t describe it here, to avoid spoilers), happens in the town, Taylor didn’t want to tar the real St. Francisville with the event, so he dropped the “-ville” for his novel.

It would appear to be an amazing coincidence. But here’s what Taylor did not know until I told him this morning via e-mail.

A horrible deed very close to the one described in the book actually happened in St. Francisville many decades ago. Few people alive today know about it. I learned of it from someone who was there, and who took part. I have been haunted by that knowledge, and have thought for some time about whether to write about it, and how. The correlation between the event Dan Taylor made up for his book, and set by happenstance in my hometown, and what actually went down in my hometown in the same time period mentioned in the book, is quite stunning to me.

I think it is in some way a meaningful coincidence, a synchronicity. How could it not be?

Death Comes for the Deconstructionist is a wonderful novel, by the way. When I finish it, I’m going to be blogging a lot more on it, and hope to have an interview with the author.