My trilogy about the undertaker’s daughter has been so much fun, truly an exhilarating journey. My heartfelt thanks go out to all of you for how warmly you’ve welcomed Ilka, and for following along with us.
The Third Sister is a work of fiction. Many settings in the book exist in the real world, but I’ve also taken the liberty of creating locales, reshaping them, moving them around to make them fit my story. My travels to Racine and Key West have been fascinating, but my characters are not based on real people. Their names and everything about them sprang out of my imagination.
The same goes for God’s Will. It was inspired by actual cults and true events, but the cult and everything that transpired in the book are fictional.
Again, I’d like to extend my gratitude to Christina Gauguin, the undertaker at Elholm Mortuary. She was my first contact with the undertaking business and has since taken time to answer all my questions.
This book could never have been written without the help of Benee Knauer. Her help with research in the United States has been indispensable.
I lived in the US for eighteen months while writing the Family Secrets trilogy. I would like to thank the enormous Danish network over there for your incredible support, both for my books and for me personally.
My team at my publisher, People’s Press, deserves a big thank-you. Thanks for working with me, thanks for supporting me from the very start of this trilogy. A special thanks goes out to my gifted editor, Lisbeth Møller-Madsen, who always knew precisely where I wanted to go with Ilka.
Thank you so much, Elisa Lykke, for being a wonderful PR agent. You have a sharp eye for knowing what’s best for me. It’s meant so very, very much to be able to work so closely with you.
And I want to thank Malene Kierkegaard from the Plot Workshop for her many hours of work helping me get everything into place. I’m so grateful for how committed you’ve been, how willing you were to keep at it until I brought out everything in the story I’d wanted.
A warm thanks goes out to the very talented Lotte Thorsen, who spent a week with me in New York to find out what was hidden behind the sister’s habit. Your ideas helped get the whole project off the ground. Thank you.
A very special and loving thanks to Lars and Andreas. You two keep my entire life and everything around me from unraveling. Thank you.
And my loving thanks go out to my son, Adam. Everything is better when you’re here. You are my biggest support and my greatest joy.
Finally, my heartfelt thanks go out to my fantastic, loyal readers and followers. You are the ones who make the stories live for me, who simply make me want to write. Thanks for always cheering me on. I’m so grateful that you want to read what I write. Thank you!
—Sara Blaedel