Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders

Acknowledments

Much of the dream imagery associated with the “Bottom” in this novel comes from Mia Wolff’s superb triptych of paintings, The City of Green Fire. My great gratitude goes to Chesya Burke for pictures and verbal descriptions of that lively neighborhood, Atlanta’s Little Five Points. My thanks as well to Joshua Lukin for steering me to the work of Rane Arroyo.

Gratitude beyond any expressable must go to Kevin Donaker-Ring for years of help — five for this book alone — readings, notes, reminders, and (without exaggeration) thousands of corrections, as generously offered for this one (without him, I could not have completed it), as for any in the past. Many writers have written many times on many, many acknowledgement pages, “without whose help this book could not have been written.” Kevin’s help makes me intensely aware of the myriad forms of truth that can nest in that assertion. Equally invaluable help came — repeatedly — from Ric Best, to whom I am equally grateful.

A reading by Kenneth James produced a dozen pages of incredibly helpful notes, as well as numerous marginal comments, which I have tried to address.

“The Gift Must Move”—the motto of the Gilead Elementary School — is from Lewis Hyde’s luminous study, The Gift. My gratitude to Ron Drummond for returning it to my attention, twenty-five years after my first reading, and indeed for all Ron’s active enthusiasm for life, literature, music, biblical history and science. His help as always has been tireless, wise, and invaluable. The sign in the Gilead island graveyard is, of course, a quotation from Andrew Holleran’s award-winning novel, Grief.

Also, of course, thanks to my agent Henry Morrison and my publisher and editor, Don Weise, without whom, and against truly overwhelming odds, no one would have had a chance to read it.