Acknowledgments

Thank you to: Mark Whipple, Dave Eckstein, and Catherine Rockwood, without whose insistence this novel would have been abandoned in its infancy.

To Von Long, Erin Furby, Kirsten Edwards, Bill Burns, Dave Coffman, Elizabeth Livingston, Jeff Lyman, Melanie Florence, Jessie Harris, Donna Royston, Robin Buehler, Jane Thornley, Don Schank, and Diana Hardy for their support and advice, and to Danielle Ackley-McPhail and the Yesterday’s Dreamers for all their useful ideas concerning the craft of writing.

To my editor, Jim Frenkel, for not giving up on me! And to my agent, Richard Curtis, the Knight in Shining Armor who gives me hope!

To Milton, whose title, I hope, this book honors rather than mocks.

And, most important, to my mother, Jane Lamplighter, without whose selfless devotion to her grandchildren this book literally could not have been written.