Thanks to my first readers Yvonne Strumecki, James W. Ziskin, Lynne Raimondo, Kimberly Rader, Tricia David, Darian Ochs, Laurie Martin, James Burford, and Tiffany Rader and to Lauren Stacks Yamaoka, Kim Robbins Oclon, and Adam Morgan for enthusiasm about seeing the project to completion. Thanks to Lisa Stolley, Scott Blackwood, Mary Anne Mohanraj, and Don Pollack, for early encouragement on this story and to Roosevelt University’s MFA program in creative writing for introducing most of these people into my life.
Thank you to Amy Clouse for her expertise in small-town sheriff’s offices. Mistakes made despite her good counsel are, of course, mine. Thanks to Tom Jones for the corn knowledge. Belated thanks to Rob Ramey for his high school principal help.
Special nod to the librarian at Chicago’s Edgebrook Public Library who put the book on handwriting analysis facing out on the shelf in 2007. I owe you one. Thanks to Michelle Dreshold for writing Sex, Lies, and Handwriting. To librarians in general and booksellers, too, much is owed.
My true gratitude goes to Dan Mayer and Jon Kurtz for giving me a beginning.
Special thanks, as always, to all my family and friends for how much they’ve put up with and for how much they participate in this alongside me. But the real hero here is my husband, Greg Day, whose support of this project has weathered its entire ten years.
I have struggled with how to acknowledge here the women who have faced domestic violence in real life, many of whom have not survived their abuse. They were much on my mind as I wrote this book. If you need help getting free of a bad situation, please call 1?800?799?SAFE (7233).