This book was started at the Ragdale Foundation—and later, when COVID canceled further residencies, I was grateful for the generosity of Barbara Nagel, Catherine Cooper and Marshall Greenwald, Catherine Merritt and Jack Wuest, and Lika Lopez de Victoria for letting me house-sit and make my own retreats.
Rachel DeWoskin, Gina Frangello, Thea Goodman, Dika Lam, Emily Grey Tedrowe, Zoe Zolbrod, Charles Finch, and Eli Finkel were fantastic early readers. Jon Freeman is no longer my first reader but he’s still my last, and also my emotional support human.
My students and colleagues at StoryStudio Chicago, Northwestern University, and Sierra Nevada University have provided support and inspiration, especially as the world fell apart.
An Illinois Artists Fund grant helped support me in the last year of writing.
The hugest of thanks to my two editors on this book, Lindsey Schwoeri and Andrea Schultz, for a double ass-kicking and double support, and for editing under unusual circumstances—and to the whole ship full of Vikings: Brian Tart, Rebecca Marsh, Lindsay Prevette, Kate Stark, Allie Merola, Sheila Moody, Katie Hurley, Maddie Rohlin, Lucia Bernard, Elizabeth Yaffe, Christine Choi, Mary Stone, Rebecca Marsh, and Sara Leonard. Clarence Haynes gave the book a fantastically helpful authenticity read. Truckloads of gratitude to Nicole Aragi, Maya Solovej, and Kelsey Day. My assistant, Keaton Kustler, has kept my head screwed on.
Over the past couple of strange years, I’ve felt the support of independent bookstores more than ever. If you’re reading this, please go buy yourself a present from one. You deserve it.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rebecca Makkai’s last novel, The Great Believers, was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award; it was the winner of the ALA Carnegie Medal, the Stonewall Book Award, the Clark Prize, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and it was chosen as one of the Ten Best Books of 2018 by The New York Times. Her other books are the novels The Borrower and The Hundred-Year House, and the collection Music for Wartime—four stories from which appeared in The Best American Short Stories. A 2022 Guggenheim Fellow, Rebecca is on the MFA faculties of the University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe and Northwestern University, and is Artistic Director of StoryStudio Chicago.