Thank you to Jill and to Kate and to Nick for helping me write late into the night and early in the morning. Thanks also to my parents, Carl and Tressa Hayes, for their support, and to George and Joy Rittenhouse for their help. Thank you to Pete Dexter for his personal encouragement.
Thank you to my amazing copyeditor, Kyra Freestar. I also thank Jeff Gerecke, who represented this book to publishers for several years. I give my gratitude to Vic Bobb of Whitworth University in Spokane and Steve Vander-Staay of Western Washington University, both of whom encouraged me along the way. Thank you to my early editor, Anne Dubuisson Anderson, and to my early readers Larry Clark, Molly Brown, Katherine Ropp, and J. E. B. Thornton.
My gratitude is owed as well to the following friends and reading companions, all of whom graciously read portions of the book in draft form: Katherine Wallace, Dean Bonnell, John Turnbull, Daryl Thul, S. Mackenzie Glander, Jeff Bond and Cheryl Murfin Bond, Ross TenEyck, Nina Naberhaus, Tom Osoki, John de Turk, John Stroeh, Emily E. Kelly, Ken Efta, and Marinell Simpson.
Thank you.