The Beautiful Mystery

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The Beautiful Mystery started as a fascination with music, and a very personal and baffling relationship with it. I love music. Various pieces have inspired each of the books, and I’m convinced music has had a near magical effect on my creative process. When I sit on planes, or go for walks, or drive and listen to music I can see scenes from the book I’m about to write, or am writing. I can feel the characters. Hear them. Sense them. It’s thrilling. Gamache and Clara and Beauvoir come even more alive when I’m listening to certain music. It’s transformative. Spiritual, even. I can feel the divine in the music.

I’m far from alone in this, I know.

In preparing for this book I read widely, including a book by McGill University professor Daniel J. Levitin called This Is Your Brain on Music, about the neuroscience of music—its effects on our brains.

I wanted to explore this beautiful mystery. How just a few notes can take us to a different time and place. Can conjure a person, an event, a feeling. Can inspire great courage, and reduce us to tears. And in the case of this book, I wanted to explore the power of ancient chants. Gregorian chants. On those who sing them, and those who hear them.

I had a great deal of help in writing The Beautiful Mystery. From family and friends. From books and videos and real-life experiences, including a remarkable and very peaceful stay at a monastery.

I’d like to thank Lise Desrosiers, my amazing assistant, who makes it possible for me to concentrate on writing, while she does all the rest. Thank you to my editors, Hope Dellon, of Minotaur Books in New York City, and Dan Mallory, of Little, Brown in London, for all their help with The Beautiful Mystery. Thank you, Teresa Chris and Patty Moosbrugger, my agents. To Doug and Susan, my first readers. To Marjorie, for always being so willing and happy to help.

And thank you to my husband, Michael. If there’s one mystery even more baffling and powerful than music in my life, it’s love. It’s one mystery I’ll never solve, and never want to. I just enjoy where loving Michael takes me.

And thank you, for reading my books and giving me a life beyond imagining.