I titled my second trilogy All In, long before General Petraeus’ ballyhooed biography, Chris Hayes’ tedious MSN programming or the latest Marvel extravaganza. The first section begins on the Christmas Eve of 2001, a man teetering out of control following the loss of his brother on 9/11:

There’s just these bits of blackness, and that makes it hard to put everything together. I can see the building on fire and the back of the plane melt in, gone, just sucked in like that, like nothing, and the windows down and the glass and water and me. It is all wall and window, nothing below. I am coming up, all of it hard. I want it. This is what I want. I am in hard. I am not half folded. I am not waiting. I am not holding to anything.I am of this wall, and it all comes down on me, not small or big, not anything, all in my head arched back, my whole fucking body out in light, gone through me, gone through everything, high, released, out from her, not for anything, but hard. I don’t know how much I can really take of this. I’m stuck out. Yes, it’s a story, and, yes, he’s here with me, and this is it. I was going to call Robin, and then the phone rang. I wasn’t going to answer. “Hello?”The second section follows the daughter, the third section, the widow, as everyone drifts toward isolation until a Christmas dinner one year later.