Acknowledgements

Top billing goes to the Vine Leaves Press team, especially Jessica Bell, Amie McCracken, Melissa Slayton, and Richard Bradburn. Thank you for seeing fit to give my story such a warm and hospitable home and for making my debut novel the best it can be. Fellow VLP authors Elaina Battista-Parsons and Kate Brandt have been helpful and encouraging in immeasurable ways from the start, and I am honored to be in such talented company.

My generous early readers—Erin Clune, Karen Fink, Maria Julia Rossi, Amy Tucker, and Lois Tucker—provided the kick of confidence I needed to keep going. One of my oldest and dearest friends, Andrea Volpe, has been a soulmate on this novel-writing adventure, and I am grateful for all our existential writing process talks. My beloved, funny, brilliant cousin Maile is without a doubt my biggest supporter and if she were my only reader, writing this novel would have been well worth it.

On the matter of tiny historical facts that nevertheless felt utterly crucial to get right, a shout out to Sam Spinner at Johns Hopkins University for kindly sharing a fascinating micro history of the Yiddish language in the academy and to Allison Pease at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and her Woolf scholar compatriots for the same about the teaching of A Room of One’s Own.

My husband, Gerard, is one of the best readers and editors I know, and I’m always grateful when he trains his talent on my writing. Even though I shout and get defensive, he’s always right, and I appreciate his pro bono labor, forbearance, love and encouragement more than anything.