Local journalist John Muller has just published a book detailing the life and times of famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass as he lived and worked in Washington.

A simple interpretation of “Chekhov’s gun,” a literary device made popular by author and playwright Anton Chekhov, is that if there’s a gun in a story, at some point somebody should fire it. In other words, every detail in a story, no matter how small, should exist to move the narrative along. Even if the hypothetical gun is never fired, its very existence could be used to create an unnerving atmosphere crucial to the story….