Lindsay Mazotti, Molly Burnett, and Bob Truog, all physicians, were incredibly generous with their medical expertise. Dave Considine and Brad Mascott were equally so with their sailing and boating knowledge, as was Phil Bennett of the Hinckley yacht company. Cathy Burnett shared personal details of her husband Bob Burnett’s battle with glioblastoma with me and I am grateful to her for that. Jennifer Thibodeau and Victoria Abbott from Maine Family Planning procured the proper medical advice and appointments for one of my characters. Lisa DeStefano of DeStefano Architects shared her professional expertise, as did Judy Anderson of Alexander Haas. Sue Santa Maria and Priscilla Hare put me up in their beautiful home in Owls Head, Maine, and fed me when I first started this book and needed a few days away. Kelly Doucette and Lisa Broten helped with legal matters in the story. The other member of the Newburyport Writers’ Club, Katie Schickel, always offers invaluable friendship and a professional sounding board. The members of the Newburyport Mom Squad: you know who you are, and you rock. Besides being two of the best besties out there, Jennifer Truelove and Margaret Dunn are always ready to name a boat or a lighthouse, complete a metaphor, or share a laugh or a trip. In addition, Margaret offered just the right editorial insight at just the right time. Elise Willingham helped keep the household moving for much of the past year.
Phillip Torrey, who fishes out of Winter Harbor, Maine, answered so many of my questions about the world of lobster fishing with such delightful detail and enthusiasm that I feel ready to apply for a lobster fishing license myself. (Not really—don’t worry, state of Maine.) I am grateful for Phillip’s patience and expertise, and I admire the hard work he and all of the fishermen up and down the coast do day after day in all sorts of conditions. The book How to Catch a Lobster in Down East Maine by Christina Lemieux Oragano also shed a lot of light on the world.
Thank you to the team at Doubleday for their hard work all around. My editor, Melissa Danaczko, is brilliant, patient, forgiving, and always willing to push a little harder to make a book better. Every writer needs that. Margo Shickmanter, a talented editor in her own right, scooped up many dangling pieces of story line and kept the details in order, and Mark Lee and Lauren Hesse kept publicity and marketing moving in the right direction. My agent, Elisabeth Weed of The Book Group, is a formidable presence in the agenting world and at the same time a warm, supportive, and absolutely necessary part of my writing life. Thank you always to my in-laws, Cheryl Moore and the Destrampe family. I never thought I would thank my parents, John and Sara Mitchell, for moving me to Down East Maine my senior year in high school (I’ve almost gotten over it), but I can safely say that without that experience this book would not exist and so for that and many other reasons I thank them. My sister, Shannon Mitchell, is a tireless cheerleader and a generous and loving aunt. My daughters, Addie, Violet, and Josie, are endless sources of amusement—and sometimes bemusement—and also laundry, love, inspiration, and support. I began this book years ago, put it down for a good long while, and eventually came back to it. My husband Brian’s belief in it and in me never wavered, and for that and pretty much everything else he does and is I count myself the luckiest of the lucky.
As I was finishing the final edits on this book my father-in-law, Frank Moore, lost his battle with lung cancer. I conceived this book and wrote most of it before he became ill, but now I see that some of the best qualities of Frank and some of the best qualities of the character of Charlie Sargent echo each other—hardworking men who loved their families and lived lives that might have looked quiet from the outside but brimmed over from the inside. I like to think of the spirits of both living on.