The Double Bind

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I WANT TO THANK RITA MARKLEY, executive director of Burlington, Vermont ’s Committee on Temporary Shelter, both for sharing these images with me and then for inviting me into her life to see the shelter she manages.

In addition, I could not have written this novel without the wisdom, guidance, and unfailing patience of two advance readers: Johanna Boyce, a psychotherapist with her master’s in social work; and Dr. Richard Munson, a psychiatrist at the Vermont State Hospital in Waterbury, Vermont.

I am grateful as well to the following people for answering my specific questions about mental illness, the homeless, and the law: Sally Ballin, Milia Bell, Tim Coleman, and Lucia Volino, of Burlington’s Committee on Temporary Shelter; Shawn Thompson-Snow, of the Howard Center for Human Services in Chittenden County, Vermont; Brian M. Bilodeau, Susan K. Blair, Thomas McMorrow Martin, and Kory Stone, of the Northwest State Correctional Facility in Swanton, Vermont; Doug Wilson, a psychotherapist with the Vermont Treatment Program for Sexual Abusers at the Northwest State Correctional Facility; Rebecca Holt, of the Burlington Free Press; Jill Kirsch Jemison; Dr. Michael Kiernan; Stephen Kiernan; Steve Bennett; attorneys Albert Cicchetti, William Drislane, Joe McNeil, and Tom Wells; and, finally, the Probate Court of Chittenden County, Vermont.

As always, I am indebted to my literary agent, Jane Gelfman; to my editors at Random House-Shaye Areheart, Marty Asher, and Jennifer Jackson; and to my wife, Victoria Blewer, a wonderful reader who manages to balance candor with kindness.

I thank you all.

Finally, I want to acknowledge my appreciation for three books. Two are nonfiction stories about mental illness that were both informative and inspirational: Greg Bottoms’s Angelhead: My Brother’s Descent into Madness, and Nathaniel Lachenmeyer’s The Outsider: A Journey into My Father’s Struggle with Madness.

The third, of course, is F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. There are myriad reasons why-along with millions of readers spanning four generations-I have read and reread this novel. Why, as a novelist, I have revered it. There is the poignancy of Gatsby’s great dream, Fitzgerald’s luminescent prose, and the writer’s profound insight into the American character. There is that wrenchingly beautiful ending.

For the purposes of The Double Bind, however, there was something more. Few novels have had the intellectual influence on our literary culture as The Great Gatsby, and fewer still have been as widely read. Second, The Great Gatsby is a book, in part, about broken people, their lies and distortions: the lies we live consciously, and those we convince ourselves are mere embellishments upon a basic reality. That is, perhaps, among the principal issues the characters confront in The Double Bind, too, and why The Great Gatsby presents itself as such a unique and pervasive influence on the fictional Laurel Estabrook.

Consequently, I want to express both my admiration for The Great Gatsby and my gratitude that it is a part of the canon.

PUBLISHER’S NOTE: The author is donating a portion of his royalties to Burlington ’s Committee on Temporary Shelter.