The allegiance of this book is to memory; this is a past colored, arranged, and choreographed entirely by that transforming, idiosyncratic light. Any character here might well see things entirely differently. As my sister—bless her—put it, “Well, the things you got wrong just make it that much more you.” I’m more grateful to her than I can say, for her forbearance, for her understanding and acceptance of what can’t always have been easy.
My gratitude, too, to a band of readers—Michael Carter, Bernard Cooper, Martha Christina, Elizabeth McCracken, Carol Muske, and Maggie Valentine—who read this book in many of its incarnations, and offered good advice and great company.
Bill Clegg read with acute insight, and then represented the book with such heroic energy and professionalism that I’m permanently in his debt. Robert Jones, as ever, proved the most devoted, perceptive, and hardworking editor luck could bring me; he offers every day the kind of association writers mostly just dream about.
Paul Lisicky heard every one of these pages, in their raw new form, then read every word over and over again, so that the language seems something shared, as well as the memories that language evokes. In this way it is his book almost as much as it is my own.
And to the Virgin of Guadalupe: thank you.