My agent, Stephanie Cabot, has gone above and beyond to make this book happen. Thank you. It has been an honor to work with Terry Karten, my editor. This manuscript also benefitted from the sharp editorial eyes of Dawn Davis and Tracy Sherrod. I am immensely grateful to both of you.
The DC Commission on the Arts generously provided an Individual Artist grant in support of Balm. With those funds, I traveled to archives, libraries, battlefields, and museums. I could not have done it without their support.
During the course of my research, I encountered many generous people eager to lend a hand. Matt Rutherford and Lauren Reno at the Newberry Library in Chicago. Tim James at Bookbinders Museum in San Francisco. Jenna Entwistle at the York County Archives and Library. Barby Morland at Library of Congress. Thanks to the many nameless people who directed or assisted me at the University of Chicago Regenstein Library, the Chicago History Museum, and the Boston Public Library. I am also thankful to the security guards who asked about my research and encouraged me to continue.
I have always said fiction writers have a lot of ground to cover if we want to catch up with the scholars. I am deeply indebted to the brilliant work of Sharla Fett, Frances Smith Foster, Yvonne Chireau, Ann Braude, Heather Andrea Williams, Donald Miller, Leon Litwack, Ann Taves, Molly McGarry, and Pier Gabrielle Foreman. Christopher Robert Reed graciously spent an afternoon talking black Chicago history with me. Balm was originally inspired by Drew Gilpin Faust’s The Republic of Suffering.
My sister-in-law Maria Aparicio helped answer medical questions. My classmate, Dr. Manuel Saint-Victor, first told me about sympathetic blindness.
Special thanks to my writer mentors: Tina McElroy Ansa, Pearl Cleage, Terry McMillan, and Marita Golden. My dear mentor and friend James A. Miller: you are always a light in my heart. My colleagues at the Stonecoast MFA program are supportive and kind.
Fortunately, my mother’s sisters are nothing like the sisters in this book. I am forever grateful for the love of my aunts: Beverly Fitzpatrick, Agnes Epps, Carole Thornton, and the late Rosemary Hughes.
Special thanks to my two nieces Helen Aparicio and Barbara McClure for helping with my little ones. My dearest Mrs. Della Jones has become family. Thanks to my beloved sister and brother: Jeanna and Harry. Thanks to my parents, Barbara and James, for the awesome PR machine, also known as parental bragging.
Special thanks to the Pen/Faulkner Foundation Writers-in-Schools program and the students at District of Columbia high schools, especially Ballou, Coolidge, The Seed School, Chavez, Banneker, Bell, McKinley, and Anacostia. You are all exceptional. Go out and change the world.
Finally, I am humbled by the continued support of my little familia—David, Emilia, and Elena, who keeps asking me to write a book about her. Everything is about you, my darling.