Thanks first to Edward, who got well, and who makes a toast to literature whenever we eat out. He and Douglas Bauer, April Bernard, Susan Hulsman Bingham, Donald Hall, and Susan Holahan read the manuscript of this book and offered helpful suggestions. Warm thanks to them and to others who steadily gave help, wisdom, and companionship: Ben Mattison, Lisa Yelon, Andrew Mattison, Jacob Mattison, Jill Mulvey, Sandi Kahn Shelton, Anita Taylor, Ann Leamon, and Jude Stewart. Thanks, too, to Naomi Tannen and Joe Mahay for quiet time in the mountains.
Thanks to the Crossett Library at Bennington College, and to my colleagues and students in the Bennington Writing Seminars, who remind me with their work and passion why we read and write.
Thanks to my loyal and ever-surprising agent, Zoë Pagnamenta, and her associate Sarah Levitt. Much gratitude to my brilliant editor, Claire Wachtel, to Elizabeth Perrella, and to all the clever people at Harper Perennial.
Thanks always to the MacDowell Colony and to Yaddo.
Many books were useful in the writing of this novel; I’d especially like to mention The New York City Teachers Union, 1916–1964, by Celia Lewis Zitron, New York, 1968.