To the various patient answerers of questions, interviewees, expert witnesses, careful and measured listeners, researchers, and divulgers of secret lives—in person or via e-mail and/or telephone—know that you helped situate these characters in their world: Lottie Ashton; Robert M. Dale; Jennae Harwell; Michael Hinch; Katie McCleary; American River College librarian Debby Ondricka; Jeffry-Wynne Prince; Tristan Soderberg-Mull; Henry Twilling; Dennis Yudt; and many of my students at American River College in Sacramento. My gratitude to all.
I am indebted to four master writers who have offered friendship, care, and counsel when needed most. Richard Ford was kind enough to help me navigate the business side of things, offering expert advice and perfectly timed words of caution. Pam Houston’s friendship and support have been invaluable, both on a personal and professional level. Denis Johnson kindly suffered a slew of stupid questions about Bonners and North Idaho and then pushed me to create better lies to answer them. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the lasting impact of my first writing teacher, now a friend of more than two decades, T. Coraghessan Boyle, fellow explorer of the collision of human and animal worlds. These people are the stars of my particular brand of heaven, and I am grateful for their friendship.
I did a great deal of reading during the drafting of this novel. In particular, I would like to acknowledge a few texts I returned to over and over again: Michael Allaby’s Temperate Forests; Reed W. Fautin’s Biotic Communities and the Northern Desert Shrub Biome in Western Utah; Dwayne Kling’s The Rise of the Biggest Little City: An Encyclopedic History of Reno Gaming, 1931–1981; James A. MacMahon’s Deserts; Roberta Parish, Ray Coupé, and Dennis Lloyd’s Plants of the Southern Interior, British Columbia, and the Inland Northwest; Jakob von Uexküll’s A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans; William T. Vollmann’s monumental Rising Up and Rising Down: Some Thoughts on Violence, Freedom and Urgent Means; and of course Vinson Brown, Charles Yocum, and Aldine Starbuck’s Wildlife of the Intermountain West, a book given to me by my grandparents when I was a child. The copy of The Tibetan Book of the Dead referenced is the 1960 Oxford University Press edition, as translated by W. Y. Evans-Wentz. I should also note that the work of John Brandon, Doug Peacock, Else Poulsen, Paul Shepard, Gary Snyder, and Clive D. L. Wynn were important in helping me find ways to approach the animals in this book.
Thank you to everyone at Liveright and W. W. Norton, especially my lovely editor Katie Adams, Cordelia Calvert, Peter Miller, and Philip Marino. Also many thanks for the lovely cover design by Jaya Miceli and copyediting expertise of Miranda Ottewell.
Finally, profound gratitude to my wonderful agent Eleanor Jackson, who was honest right when she needed to be. This novel would not exist without her.