I can’t imagine living in a world without libraries and librarians. I wish I could thank by name every librarian I’ve ever met, from the kind women in Wichita, Kansas, where my mother took us to the library every Saturday long ago, to the Milwaukee librarian named Lorelei who drove a Corvette convertible.
I’m so grateful to the women who were and are the library directors of our splendid Nantucket Atheneum—Barbara Andrews, Charlotte Maison, and Molly Anderson, and all their assistants, and all the volunteers. I want especially to thank Leslie Malcolm, director of the Weezie Library for Children at the Nantucket Atheneum. If I’ve made mistakes or perhaps changed library policy, I’ve done it in the service of fiction, and I’ll be so proud when this book is on the shelves of our island library. I want to thank Janice O’Mara, Lee Rand Burne, Christine Turrentine, Pam Kenny, Eileen McGrath, Maureen Beck, Ellie Coffin, Nancy Tyrer, Amy Jenness, Gillian Lewis, Pamela McGrady, Laura Freedman, Adelaide Richards, Christina Gessler, Ellen Young, Ben Murphy, and all the people who have sat at the circulation desk and helped me find a book or a DVD. It is true. If you want to know anything, ask a librarian.
I also want to thank all those who work with a Friends of the Library group. You make so many programs, events, and book purchases possible, plus I think (I know from experience!) you all have a lot of fun! My gratitude also goes to those who are on the board of trustees of the libraries all over this country. Not every country in the world has free public libraries. How fortunate we are.
And how fortunate too I am to be published by the fine team at Ballantine. I want to send enormous thanks to both of my editors, Linda Marrow and Shauna Summers, and to Elena Seplow-Jolley and Hanna Gibeau. Gina Centrello, Kim Hovey, Christine Mykityshin, Maggie Oberrender, and Paolo Pepe, a million times thank you!
Enormous thanks to my wonderful agent and friend Meg Ruley, and to the brilliant Christina Hogrebe and to all those at the Jane Rotrosen Agency.
Of course I send thanks to all our bookstores, especially to Laura Wasserman, Tim Ehrenberg, Wendy Hudson, Suzanne Bennett, Christina Macchiavelli, and the wonderful Mitchell’s Book Corner. Thanks also to everyone at the marvelous Titcombs Bookshop in Sandwich, MA.
I couldn’t write books without the support and great humor of my family and friends, and I include my fabulous Facebook friends in this group. So thank you, a million times thank you!
I couldn’t write or do much of anything at all without my husband, Charley Walters, a man who also knows that books and libraries are essential for a happy life.