"So I put this bag into the back of my car and drove it home. By this stage the series was so enormous that I was almost frightened to be in physical possession of it . . . I shoved it under the bed. I had another typescript sitting there . . . so I stuffed [the] top four pages of David Guterson’s East of the Mountains on the top and then stayed up all night reading it, which my wife did find a bit odd . . . There was no question of showing any of it to her. Even then I was putting bits of it in the safe," said Newton of the exchange.