Acknowledgments

 

IT HAS BEEN MY PLEASURE to write this story and bring these characters and this time to life. Among the many people who helped and encouraged me, I want to particularly thank my beta readers for providing insightful feedback: Loretta Goldberg, Gordon Linzner, Roy Post, Mary Ann Trail, Susan Wands, Hanson Wong, and Lisa Yarde. They spent a significant amount of time and effort to make this a better book, and I can’t thank them enough for their help. Special and loving thanks go to my husband Gordon for supporting me in countless ways, and to my daughter Hannah, who grew up sharing me with my writing career and showing no sibling rivalry whatsoever.

No historical fiction acknowledgment would be complete without thanks to the many librarians and collections that tirelessly answer questions and find obscure documents. My special thanks go to the New York City Public Library—a world class institution. I consulted dozens of books and hundreds of articles but relied most heavily on the research of Kenneth G. Holum from his Theodosian Empresses: Women and Imperial Dominion in Late Antiquity and Ada B. Teetgen’s The Life and Times of Empress Pulcheria AD 399 to AD 452. A bibliography of the most useful works can be found on my website (faithljustice.com).

Although I tried to get it right, no one is perfect. If the gentle reader should find errors in the book, please know they are my own and not those of my sources.

Again, thanks to all who helped make this book possible, with special thanks to those of you who read it and share it in the future.