Dirt

Acknowledgments

I’d like to thank the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the University of San Francisco for generous support during the writing of this novel, and Colm Tóibín, Janet Burroway, and David Kirby for recommending me.

I’d also like to thank everyone at Harper, especially Gail Winston, Jonathan Burnham, Jane Beirn, and Maya Ziv, and everyone at Inkwell, especially Kim Witherspoon, David Forrer, Lyndsey Blessing, Patricia Burke, and Alexis Hurley.

And I must of course thank Galen Palmer, my best friend in high school, whose name I’ve borrowed here. Early on, he was the one who helped turn my life around.