Day of the Dragonfly begins in rural Brazil in the mid-1930s. Persistent drought in the state of Ceará has João's family on the edge of starvation, and the fourteen-year-old boy is sent by his parents on a long, footsore journey to find a better place. Ill health and fear of being embarrassed by his own ignorance drive his psychological deterioration.

Dragonfly ends in 1975 on a cheap chaise longue sitting in front of a camping trailer. Few readers will escape the complex emotions waiting on the last page.

The novel is divided into three "books" - each inspired by the life of a real person and focused on the curses of poverty. In the traditional world of publishing, these stories would be sold, more profitably, as a trilogy. However, their tight integration and engaging cross-links insist on their being contained inside the same cover.

Shortly before his fifth birthday, David Vogel announced he wanted violin lessons. When his father insisted violins were too expensive, David went knocking on doors and came home with the loan of a half-size violin. Growing up, it was assumed he would become an artist of some sort while his older brother would be a scientist. David was not the better student of the two. When he graduated from high school, the principal called his parents in for a conference and informed them that it would be a waste of David's time and their money to send him to college. But in college, he and his brother switched places. His brother became an actor while David earned a PhD in biophysics (but with a subspecialty in eccentricity).

Most of Dr Vogel's writing has been educational, and almost all of it (including an introductory physics textbook) has been humorous. (His research papers on neural network models of higher cognitive processes are not at all amusing, but at least he almost failed his thesis defense when the conservative academic from a country with a certain national stereotype took issue with his amusing style - not appropriate in scientific writing).

Facing retirement, Dr Vogel has taken the opportunity to begin writing fiction. (Well, the physics problems about his Chrysler powered Smart Car were already fiction.) Day of the Dragonfly is the first novel he has let out of his hands, and it is the first that is not humorous. "It was an unexpected book that came chasing after me while I was sitting with my wife on a long, hot, tropical day in Brazil. It didn't have a single joke in it, but it insisted on being written. It seemed to write itself. Unfortunately, it wouldn't stop writing itself, and when it went past three hundred thousand words, it had to be hacked back like an acre of kudzu."

David Vogel presently resides in Hull, Georgia. He's easy to find. Hull is just one vowel from Hell. The serous tone and formal style of the new book have not stopped him from doing stand-up comedy.