ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My books would not be possible without the generosity of historians working in the field. Special thanks to Jennifer Kolpacoff Deane and Tanya Stabler Miller, whose work on the beguine movement sparked my imagination, to Susan Signe Morrison for a small detail about beguines that inspired a plot point, and to Louise Hampson for help in sorting out locations in medieval York.

I am grateful to Laura Hodges, Joyce Gibb, Mary Morse, Chris Nickson, my agent Jennifer Weltz, and my editor Maia Larson for reading the manuscript and offering insightful comments and suggestions; and to my husband, Charlie, for creating a coherent family tree out of what looked like the web of a psychotic spider, for designing and updating the maps of York, for figuring out what was unclear in a troublesome scene, and, most of all, for being there for me no matter what.