Oh, Readers, where to begin when my gratitude for those who helped to make this big, queer novel is so deep and wide? When this book wouldn’t exist without the support of everyone from the lifeguards at my neighborhood Y, who (usually) managed to stay awake to watch over my early-morning lap swims—a meditative time during which I sorted plot elements—to the antiques dealers who sold me sapphic stereo cards and flower dictionaries, ostensibly for research, but also for sheer delight?
To my agent, Jessica Regel, who sat with me at a sticky dining table in a rented ski condo filled with my loud (and tipsy) family members, a snowstorm outside, and who told me to stop hemming and hawing and to write this book exactly as I thought it should be written, even if that meant complicating a lot of other things. Jessica, thank you for your years-long belief in my words. (Also, thanks for sharing twin bunkbeds with practical strangers and for being so damn chill about it.)
To my tireless editors, Jessica Williams at William Morrow and Carla Josephson at Borough: thank you for seeing the much better novel in that monstrous early draft and for pushing me to write and revise toward that end. I’m so glad we figured out, together, how to fill the holes while staying true to my weird vision. This book was so improved by your careful attention and good humor along the way.
Sara Lautman, thank you for sending that first hello and how are you email all those years ago, and for sticking with this unwieldly story during all the years since. (I know how slow I work, especially when compared to your usual output.) When I wasn’t sure what this novel was, or what it could be, I felt so lucky to have your illustrations there to help inspire me. (And we got our map!)
I have so much gratitude for the brilliant teams at HarperCollins US and UK that work so diligently, and with such good cheer, to make books and authors shine: Julia Elliott, Leah Carlson-Stanisic, Ploy Siripant, Ryan Shepherd, Shelby Peak, Eliza Rosenberry, Liate Stehlik, Jennifer Hart, and Kelly Rudolph at William Morrow; and Fleur Clarke, Ann Bissell, Isabel Coburn, and Holly MacDonald at Borough Press.
I am in debt to my early readers for their thoughtful notes and questions and their creative insights and enthusiasm. Thank you to Marissa Neilson, Carrie Shipers, Malinda Lo, and Alessandra Balzer (who took a chance on a very different version of this novel back when it was just a few pages and who, for a time, helped to guide it). Thanks, too, to Rebecca Rotert and Timothy Schaffert, who let me vent and kvetch and who gave me back such calm understanding and wisdom (and jokes!) in response.
Much love to Ben Chevrette and Scott Humphreys. Thank you, always, for your friendship and support, but in specific: thank you for those long beach weekends. If you hadn’t been so willing to keep hauling that cooler with cheap champagne and stemware across the dunes for literal miles, I might not have fallen so in love with the Rhode Island coastline and its many charms. We’ll always have [name of beach redacted to keep away the summer people].
Thank you to my former colleagues in the English Department at Rhode Island College for your early support of this novel—and of me—and to the MacDowell Colony for time, space, and those fantastic picnic basket lunches.
Thanks to every single reader and family member and friend who has asked about this book along the way to get here (when’s it coming?!). I feel so lucky that you’re out there.
Thank you to my mom, Sylvia Danforth, who is one of the most dedicated and enthusiastic readers I know (three book clubs!) and who, over the long course of my working on this novel, so often fed our dogs and did the dishes, baked muffins, cooked dinners, arranged vases of flowers, and, in general, let me submerge myself in Brookhants for hours on end, and then was always excited to ask me about how things were going once I came up for air. (Even if I didn’t always feel like saying.)
Last and most and always, to Erica Edsell, my Erica Edsell: my very favorite person ever.
(Oh, and of course: to Mary MacLane, and not just for what she wrote, but for who she was.)