Writing this book involved no fewer than five, ahem, calamities. (Be careful what you name a thing. . . .) We’ve taken a blood oath not to talk about some of them, but you can be assured it’s something of a miracle this book made it to your bookshelf. (Although we will say, many laptops died to bring you this information.)
There were a lot of miracle workers involved with this book, including our agents: Katherine Fausset, Holly Frederick, Lauren MacLeod, Michael Bourret, and Jennifer Laughran; our editors: Erica Sussman and Stephanie Stein; and a whole ton of behind-the-scenes Harper folks like: Jenna Stempel-Lobell, Olivia Russo, Alexandra Rakaczki, Louisa Currigan, Sabrina Abballe, Ebony LaDelle, Cindy Hamilton, and Jennifer Corcoran.
As Jane discovers her family in this book, we are grateful for ours. Thanks to Carter, Beckham, Sam, Joan, and Michael; Jeff, Sarah, and Jill; and Will, Madeleine, Dan, and Carol and Jack, who graciously let us use their house to hide away and write.
For this book, we made our own journey to Deadwood, where we had lots of adventures that included having dinner at the Gem, watching the trial of Jack McCall, and visiting Wild Bill’s and Calamity Jane’s graves in Mount Moriah Cemetery. The Deadwood of today is pretty different than the Deadwood of 1876 (it’s a lot cleaner, for example), but we definitely felt the spirit of the Old West while we were visiting. Thanks to Justin Coupens, our AirBob guy; we loved staying in the jailhouse, our awesome and weird home away from home. Thanks to Jena Sierks, the actress who walks around Deadwood dressed as Calamity Jane; this chance meeting was a highlight of our trip. And thanks to Wyatt and Misty Morse, the owners of Raspberry Hill, who let us look around their beautiful raspberry (not pink!) house.
In this book, we adjusted a few ages, combined various historical figures to create our own characters, and generally messed around with things to suit our purposes. Yes, we usually do this, but in My Calamity Jane, we did it a lot. Presenting a full list of what we changed would take another full book (and this one is already pretty long), so we encourage you to do some research on your own to see what we kept and what we, ahem, improved upon. A few resources to get you started:
The Life and Legends of Calamity Jane by Richard W. Etulain
Searching for Calamity: The Life and Times and Calamity Jane by Linda Jucovy
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown
Native Peoples of North America, the Great Courses series by Professor Daniel M. Cobb
Wild Bill: The True Story of the American Frontier’s First Gunfighter by Tom Clavin
Missie: The Life and Times of Annie Oakley by Annie Fern Swartwout
An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
“All the Real Indians Died Off”: and 20 Other Myths About Native Americans by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Diana Gilio-Whitaker
The Real Deadwood: True Life Histories of Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, Outlaw Towns, and Other Characters of the Lawless West by John Ames
This Land podcast hosted by Rebecca Nagle
The Oglala Sioux Tribe Official Website: www.oglalalakotanation.info
The Northern Cheyenne Tribal Historic Preservation Office: www.ncthpo.com
Also, thank you to our fantastic sensitivity readers, Elise McMullen-Ciotti and Ruth Hopkins. Your feedback was invaluable and we are so grateful for your knowledge, your work, and the time you took to read our book.
We also want to acknowledge some of the incredible people who read and push our books. OwlCrate and LitJoy Crate are two book boxes we love and support. The amazing Sarah Kershaw of Your Book Travels, who works so hard to promote our books; gosh, you’re great. Also, Tiffie van Bordeveld, who drew some amazing My Plain Jane art: thank you!
And, of course, we’re grateful for all the librarians and bookstores who share our books with readers. Special thanks to our local indies, One More Page, Rediscovered Books, and King’s English Bookshop.
And, as always, our readers. Thanks for being so gosh darn wonderful.