Lucky Us

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My editor, Kate Medina, continues to be one of the luckiest breaks of my life, writing and otherwise. My agent, Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, is, always, a generous and serious reader, a gifted, relentless advocate and excellent company. My dear friend, Phyllis Wender, has always given me great support and continues to do so.

I want to thank the MacDowell Colony, at which I made any number of wrong turns, and a few right ones. I also thank Wesleyan University’s Olin Library and its resourceful and exceptional librarians.

I also wish to thank my very dear friend, and twin, Jack O’Brien, and his Imaginary Farms, which have given me safe haven, comfort, and more joy than one can imagine, while sitting at a table, in a barn, facing a wall.

I am very lucky in my friends and family, all of whom know lots of things I don’t: Dr. Sydney Spiesel helped me with all medical questions, and infallibly; Jane Stern, divine interpreter of road food and the tarot, was generous with her time and talent; my niece Karina Lubell and her husband, Romain Mareuil, are responsible for any good use I have made of idiomatic French and are in no way responsible for my gaffes; scholar and novelist LaShonda Barnett provided expert and creative research as I was getting this book under way and she also provided the soundtrack for much of the writing.

My reading family, Kay Ariel, Bob Bledsoe, Alexander Moon, Caitlin Moon Sorenson, and Sarah Moon, all read with care and kindness and well-crafted criticism. Michael Cunningham gave me a much-needed boost and, as he does, Richard McCann helped me through the last, dark hour.

I must thank my dear cousin Harold Bloom, whose brilliance shines a light on all writers, past and present, and who helped me, with tea and wit, to find a better way to put almost anything.

Jennifer Ferri is the best. Period.

Finally, I thank my husband, Brian Ameche, for giving me everything I have ever hoped for.