ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

MY GRATITUDE AND admiration go to my editor, Jill Bialosky, whose acumen improved this book immensely, and also to my agent, Gail Hochman, whose guidance and support were invaluable. Thanks also to Evan Carver and Adele McCarthy-Beauvais.

I was lucky to have many insightful readers for this manuscript during the process of its creation, including my sister Joanna Mitchell, J. M. Tyree, Michael Cunningham, Ernesto Mestre, Jenny Offill, Lewis Braham, Cari Luna, Halimah Abdullah, and Philip Kadish. Irini Spanidou, Lauren Acampora, James Helgeson, Joseph Pearson, Stacie Cassarino, Monica King, David Bain, Kate Davis and Christina Wulf all gave much-appreciated encouragement. My parents, Lois and Christopher Mitchell, were amazing in their love, support and provision of air-conditioning at crucial moments. Wendy Brandchaft and Charlie Plotkin gave me my very first writer’s grant and believed in me all along. My grandparents Elaine and Bernard Brandchaft gave their whole family a love of reading and thinking.

Certain books were extremely useful in the research for this novel, most especially Penelope Niven’s outstanding biography of Edward Steichen, published by Clarkson Potter. I also referred extensively to John Keegan’s The First World War, John Ellis’s Eye-Deep in Hell, and many other works from and about the period in which the novel is set.

Thanks to the Julia and David White Artists’ Colony in Costa Rica, where I finished an initial draft of the book.