ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

AMONG MY INSPIRATIONS for the play’s depiction were Laurence Olivier’s 1983 TV movie King Lear and the 2014 National Theatre Live version, directed by Sam Mendes with Simon Russell Beale playing Lear. All line citations in this novel come from the Signet Classic edition of William Shakespeare’s King Lear, published in 1998.

Thank you to Jacob Holden for expertise regarding the criminal justice system, and to Dr. Ann Rothman, Dr. Caroline Vu, Dr. Serge Gauthier, Bernie Kelly Goulem, Dolly Dastoor and Susan Doherty for helping me understand aging human brains and bodies. Any legal or medical errors in this work of fiction are of the author’s own making. I take full responsibility for them.

Thanks to Samantha Haywood, Stephanie Sinclair and Jennifer Deleskie for early reading of the manuscript and timely counsel. Many thanks to the team at Penguin Random House Canada: Nicole Winstanley and editors Shima Aoki, Alex Schultz and Lara Hinchberger for their keen intelligence and intuition.

Deep gratitude to my husband, Arthur Holden, for his good humour and love, and for being this book’s first reader.

To the Conseil des Arts et Lettres du Québec and the people of Quebec, thank you for invaluable material support during the first year of the writing process.