The Fourth Hand

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I AM INDEBTED TO Charles Gibson at ABC News and Good Morning America for his sixteen-page, single-spaced fax to me—the most detailed notes I received on the first draft of this (or any other) novel. Thank you, Charlie. I owe a similar debt to Dr. Martin Schwartz in Toronto; this isn’t the first time that Dr. Schwartz has advised me on the medical verisimilitude in a work of fiction. Thank you again, Marty.

I am grateful to David Maraniss, whom I consulted on matters pertaining to Lambeau Field and the Green Bay Packers, and to Jane Mayer for her insightful article “Bad News,” which was published in the August 14, 2000, New Yorker. In The New York Times of November 1 and 2, 1999, the reporting of the crash of EgyptAir 990 was most informative to me—in particular, pieces by Francis X. Clines, John Kifner, Robert D. McFadden, Andrew C. Revkin, Susan Sachs, Matthew L. Wald, and Amy Waldman. Dr. Lawrence K. Altman’s three stories on hand-transplant surgeries were especially enlightening; they appeared in the Times on January 26, 1999, January 15, 2000, and February 27, 2001. As for the glut of commentary and opinion that followed the death of John F. Kennedy, Jr., my sources were largely undistinguished (and often indistinguishable from one another) and too numerous to cite. The same can be said for most of the television I watched on the subject.

Not least, I would like to thank the three assistants who worked for me in the period of time this novel was written: for their careful typing and proofreading of the manuscript, and their thoughtful criticism, my thanks to Chloe Bland, Edward McPherson, and Kelly Harper Berkson. More than ever, my editor, Harvey Ginsberg, has made me look better than I am. And, as always, to my friend David Calicchio and my wife, Janet, who both read this novel more than once—thanks again.

Janet gave me the idea for The Fourth Hand. One night we were watching the news on television before we went to bed. A story about the nation’s first hand transplant got our attention. There were only brief views of the surgical procedure, and hardly a word about how the patient—the recipient, as I thought of him—lost his hand in the first place. There was nothing about the donor. The new hand had to have come from someone who’d died recently; probably he’d had a family. Janet asked the inspiring question: “What if the donor’s widow demands visitation rights with the hand?”

Dr. John C. Baldwin, the Dean of Dartmouth Medical School, has assured me that this probably wouldn’t happen in what we call real life—not without the unlikely concurrence of enough lawyers and medical ethicists to start a small liberal-arts college. But I always listen to the storytelling possibilities. Every novel I’ve written has begun with a “What if…”

—J.I.