AHAB’S WIFE is dedicated to John C. Morrison, my husband, who sailed with me throughout the voyage of writing this book, while writing his own book in physics.
Karen J. Mann, Lucinda Dixon Sullivan, Robin Lippincott, and Susan Johnson read every draft of Ahab’s Wife, making innumerable valuable suggestions and offering constant encouragement. Without their generous help, both I and the book would have floundered.
For their very detailed, insightful, and heartening response to the third draft, I must express deep gratitude to Neela Vaswani, Julie Brick-man, Jody Lisberger, and Judy Himmelfarb; and to Nan Goheen and Marcia Woodruff Dalton for their work on the second draft; and to Daly Walker and Bill Pearce for critiquing the critical opening chapters.
For their encouragement at the outset of the project or along the way, I thank my brothers John Sims Jeter and Marvin D. Jeter, and my friends Nancy and Bernard Moore, Richard M. Sullivan, Roger Weingarten, Mark Pollizzoti, Alan Naslund, Lynn Greenberg, Elizabeth F. Sulzby, Patricia and Charles Gaines, Melissa Pritchard, Dennis Buchholz, Rob LaFreniere, Luke Wallin, Mary Gordon, Maureen Morehead, Bret Lott, Christopher Noël, Linda Beattie, Kay Gill, Nana Lampton, Kay Lippincott, and Lee Salkowitz. A special thanks to Ann Marin for sharing her office with me, in the spring of 1996.
My gratitude to Leslie Daniels and Joy Harris, of the Joy Harris Literary Agency, and to my editor, Paul Bresnick, and my publisher, Michael Murphy, at William Morrow and Company overwhelms me.
And with loving thanks to Flora Naslund and Marty Kelley and to Debra Morrison and David Rizzolo, Paul Morrison, David Morrison, Sara and Michael McQuilling, and Ryan Morrison.
I also thank the Kentucky Foundation for Women for an Artist’s Grant and the Graduate School of the University of Louisville for a Completion Grant, which allowed me to lighten my teaching load by a course one semester and also helped to cover travel and research expenses to whaling museums at Nantucket, New Bedford, and Mystic. I also thank the University of Louisville for granting me a one-semester sabbatical leave of absence from teaching during which I worked on portions of this book.
