It was a fascination with the fairy tale “The Nettle Spinner” (Andrew Lang’s The Red Fairy Book) that led me to this retelling. I am indebted to the late Margaret Hald for her article “The Nettle as a Culture Plant” and to Elizabeth Wayland Barber for her book Women’s Work: The First 20,000 Years: Women, Cloth and Society. I wish to acknowledge the late Joan Bodger for simply being Joan Bodger.
Thank you to my agent, Hilary McMahon, and Westwood Creative Artist; and to Goose Lane Editions, especially Laurel Boone and Susanne Alexander. I am grateful to Dawne McFarlane, Christine Fischer Guy, Brian Panhuyzen and Lewis DeSoto for thoughtful readings of early drafts of this novel. I would like to thank Lynne Douglas, for sharing her expertise on portable looms, and Rosemary Wallbank, Cheryl Wiebe and Ida Marie Threadkell, the nettle spinners of Salt Spring Island, British Columbia; any errors herein should be attributed to fanciful rendering on my part. Thank you to Tim Brow for graciously bantering with me on the topic of treeplanting.
I would like to thank George Murray and Ailsa Craig for their unwavering support and friendship. I am, of course, ever thankful for the steadfastness of my husband, Marc Kuitenbrouwer, and for the joy I experience through our children Linden, Jonas and Christopher.