Many people helped and urged me along with this project. Louis Ross and John Shill, both Washington-area psychiatrists, were my first readers four years ago, and their criticisms, then fundamental, forced me to wholly reimagine my fractured main characters—this time with the abandon they deserve.
Thanks, too, to my oldest friend, Slaton White, for his enthusiasm and keen observations. Bill Schultz brought similar energy, and my close friend Judy Watson was especially helpful in offering a woman’s perspective. Others who were kind enough to read and comment were my oldest readers, Jay and Gay Lovinger, my daughters, Lily and Kate, novelist Barbara Esstman, and my close friend Peter Kilman. Thanks, too, to my wonderful colleagues at work and the leader I write for. And thanks above all to my Maxwell Perkins Prize–winning agent, Amanda (“Binky”) Urban, and to her make-it-happen assistant, Alison Schwartz. It was Binky who brought me to Doubleday, pairing me with my wonderful new editor, Gerry Howard, and his very talented assistant, Hannah Wood. After thirteen years without a publisher, it is good—as Gerry puts it—to be “back around the campfire.”
Special thanks also go to Mme. Joan Le Gall, retired from the University of Toronto, and her son Michel Le Gall, formerly of St. Olaf College. Fluent French speakers, they helped me address a host of cultural, linguistic, and historical issues as I completed the manuscript. The medal, though, goes to my wife, Susan Segal, a psychotherapist with a keen sense of character and the bestiary of human nature. Lucky is the author with twenty-four-hour psychiatric care!
Another lucky break as I tried to imagine the Rimbauds’ dairy farm: Much of the book was written in Manns Choice, Pennsylvania, on a farm long owned by my wife’s family. Thanks to Garry Wilkins, a local dairy farmer who answered my many cow questions and, at one point, even let me help “pull” (birth) a calf. I also greatly appreciate the company of my pal Rodney Ferguson, Fred Bisbing, and the other good folks up the hill at the Buffalo Rod & Gun Club.
Finally, I must acknowledge my mentor and former professor, the distinguished poetry critic Marjorie Perloff. Almost forty years ago, it was Marjorie who placed Wallace Fowlie’s Rimbaud into my hands and even checked off her favorites. What a gift. And what a lifelong influence Marjorie has been—incalculable.