Fates and Furies

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My gratitude begins with Clay, whom I saw for the first time in 1997 when he exited the crew room at Amherst College with his long black ponytail, and I turned, stunned, to my friend and said I’d marry him, even though I didn’t believe in marriage. The book began its life on the page at the MacDowell Colony, with the help of the work of Anne Carson, Evan S. Connell, Jane Gardam, Thomas Mann, William Shakespeare, and too many others to list; it was made immeasurably better as it traveled through the hands of my agent, Bill Clegg, and brilliant friends Jami Attenberg, Kevin A. González, Elliott Holt, Dana Spiotta, Laura van den Berg, and Ashley Warlick. Riverhead provided it (and me) a warm new home, and I’m grateful to everyone there, especially Jynne Martin and Sarah McGrath, who awes me with her unflappable calm and astonishingly bull’s-eye edits. Bless the fact-checkers and copy editors of the world, all of them. Bless, too, the readers of this book. While we’re at it, bless the readers of all books. Beckett and Heath are my purest joys, my stays against despair, but so are the people who take care of them so I can work. And if this book begins with Clay, it also ends with him: the ponytail has been shaved off and we’re older and slower, and though I am still ambivalent about marriage, I can’t believe my luck in ours.