Underground Airlines

Acknowledgments

My first and deepest thanks go to my wife, Diana Winters, and to our children, Rosalie, Ike, and Milly. I love you.

I am so fortunate to have Joëlle Delbourgo as my literary agent-and confidante and friend-and to have Shari Smiley and now Joel Begleiter watching my back on the West Coast. It was thanks to Joëlle that this book ended up at Mulholland Books/Little, Brown and in the very good hands of editors Joshua Kendall and Wes Miller. Their sensitivity and enthusiasm were transformative.

Cheers to all my other new friends in the Hachette universe: Reagan Arthur, Pam Brown, Sabrina Callahan, Ben Allen, and their respective teams. I knew any organization that had Michelle Aielli in it was one for me.

I am very grateful to the artist Oliver Munday for creating this book’s beautiful cover.

I had a lot of help in Indianapolis. Thanks to my students, colleagues, and friends in the MFA program at Butler University (named for its founder, the noted Indiana abolitionist Ovid Butler); to Officer Daniel Rosenberg and his colleagues on the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department; to Paul Bacon and his family; to Wilma Moore at the Indiana Historical Society; to Charles Harris and his colleagues at Peerless Pump; and to Professor Antwain Hunter, also at Butler. My respect and gratitude also go to the Indy literary community, especially the Indiana Writers Center, the Indianapolis Public Library, and the staff and supporters of Indy Reads.

I also had help from Kevin Hastie; from Brooke Pierce; from Ian “Gee” Chu and his cousin Dan; from Dr. Jason Organ; and, on issues of constitutional law, from Professor Morton Horwitz, who was extraordinarily generous with his very valuable time.

Thank you to everyone at Quirk Books in Philadelphia, especially Jason Rekulak, for putting me on the path I travel now.

I have taken liberties with its course, but there really is a little river called Pogue’s Run and it really does travel for much of its length below the city. I am grateful to Stuart Hyatt for inducting me into its secrets. You can visit Monument Circle in Indianapolis, but there’s no statue there of Lincoln; the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, erected in the wake of the Civil War, was the first such edifice in America built to honor the common soldier.