Acknowledgments

A heartfelt thank you to my editor, Martha Mihalick, who saw what it needed to be true. The Moon must have helped this book, and me, find our way to you. Thank you to Katie Heit and the whole team at Greenwillow Books and HarperCollins—I’m so lucky to be working with you! Vashti Harrison’s gorgeous cover perfectly captures the spirit of the book. Thank you to my amazing agents—Nancy Gallt, Marietta Zacker, and Erin Casey.

Thanks to Dyanna Lambourn, marine mammal research biologist with the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife, for an invaluable visit to a blind overlooking a seal haulout on Gertrude Island. I’m grateful to the Helen Riaboff Whiteley Center for a writing retreat in the heart of Aran’s world.

And thank you, thank you to all those who shared insights, knowledge, and support over the years I worked on this story. I’d especially like to thank Kate Whitman, Amy Baskin, and Elisabeth Benfey, wise in the ways of books and life; and Susan Blackaby, Andrew Durkin, Ellen Howard, Barbara Kerley, Annie Lighthart, Sam Lighthart-Faletra, Elena Pettycrew, Elizabeth Rusch, Holly Westlund, and Linda Zuckerman. Thanks to the students in my writing workshops—I’m inspired by our work together. All my love and thanks to my family: Richard, Kate, and Sam Whitman; my mother, Gerda Rovetch; and my sisters, Jennifer Rovetch and Lissa Rovetch. This book is dedicated to my father, Warren Rovetch, in memory. Now, there was a storyteller!