For years I tried, and mostly failed, to tell the story of my childhood molestation. I played a kind of literary hide-and-seek. To throw the reader off my trail, I threw my voice. I became a practiced ventriloquist. My first dummy was a poem, and even though my poetry tends toward the confessional, I couldn’t bring myself to confess openly. I used metaphor, fine writing, versifying, as a feint. Five years later, I tried again. This time, in a novel, I could lend my sexual abuse to my characters.