Six Feet Over

Acknowledgments

PEOPLE ASSUME that authors are experts in the field about which they have chosen to write. Possibly most are. Possibly I’m the only one who begins a project from a state of near absolute ignorance. But I do, and it makes me an especially irksome presence in my sources’ lives. I ask naive, misguided questions and giggle at the wrong moments. I stay too long and grasp too little. The following names are listed in order of diminishing exasperation: Kirti Rawat, Bruce Greyson, Gerry Nahum, Gary Schwartz, Michael Persinger, Julie Beischel, Vic Tandy, Allison DuBois, Grant Sperry, and Karl Jansen, please accept my thanks for your patience and generosity and my apologies for the limits of my experience and the blind spots of my mindset.

For miscellaneous offerings of wisdom and arcane fact, a formal bow to Jürgen Altmann, Peter Copeland, Marco Falconi, Jürgen Graaff, Lew Hollander, Jr., Nan Knight, Greg Laing, Anne LeVeque, His Excellency Pasquale Macchi, Peggy Pearl, Dean Radin, Eric Ravussin, Colleen Phelan, Julie Rousseau, Michael Sabom, Pim van Lommel, and Valerie Wheat. A tip of the hat to Kim Wong, Susan Grizzle, and Wes Lange, who got me into the operating room and out of a logistical pickle; to everyone at the Grotto; and to the ever-miraculous interlibrary loan staff of the San Francisco Public Library.

Lester, Ruby Jean, and Lloyd Blackwelder must have their own paragraph, because they not only helped me and trusted me with their story, they practically adopted me. If I could bake, I’d send you a persimmon pie.

I hesitate to thank Jay Mandel as my agent, because that is only one of the many hats I force him to wear on my behalf: reader, advisor, hand-holder, career counselor. You make it all easy. Similarly indispensable guidance and good humor came from Jill Bialosky, who has the gall to be as gifted an editor as she is a writer. The two of you have taken me on an incredible trip, for which I am deeply, unabashedly grateful.

A book is a collective undertaking, and this one, like the last, benefited tremendously from the talents of Bill Rusin and the rest of the Norton sales staff, Deirdre O’Dwyer, Erin Sinesky, and Jamie Keenan, whose covers make my heart fizz.

And then there is Ed, to whom every mushy cliché applies and none does justice.