MY FIRST PUBLISHED NOVEL, BEFORE I FORGET, CENTERED around a relatively young man who is grappling with a diagnosis of early onset Alzheimer’s disease. In order to research the condition, I read a few books and articles and sat in on a support group. Four novels later, the book you hold in your hands also features a character contending with dementia, but this time, there was little need for research. All I had to do was recall visits with my Aunt Mildred.
She was a vivacious and spirited woman reduced by disease to confusion, confinement, consternation, and the endless repetition of questions because the answers, no matter how many times they were given, simply would not take root in the quicksand soil of her mind. My aunt—my late father’s last sibling—died in May of 2017. She is greatly missed. The rhythm of Luther’s exchanges with Johan in this book are very much informed by my last conversations with her, so it seems only fitting that she receives the first acknowledgment in this book’s acknowledgments section.
Beyond that, my grandson, Timothy William Smith II—you never saw a kid more proud of his full government name—is a car buff who helped me get some details right regarding the vintage vehicles mentioned on these pages.
Dr. S. J. Rao patiently answered my medical questions.
Kelly Harris helped me nail down some legal issues.
Stephen Posey and Crystal Drye of the Selma Dallas County Public Library dug out vintage material for me to look at and helped me to get a handle on the geography of the 1965 struggle.
The Paley Center for Media in New York City gave me access to rarely seen footage of the voting rights march on its triumphant entry into Montgomery.
Among contemporaneous reporting on the three voting rights marches, Renata Adler’s work for The New Yorker and Roy Reed’s, John Herbers’s, and Gay Talese’s stories for the New York Times stand out. Their colorful, detail-rich accounts were invaluable in setting the scene. I also leaned heavily on several books, including: Jimmie Lee & James by Steve Fiffer and Adar Cohen; Protest at Selma by David J. Garrow; From Selma to Sorrow by Mary Stanton; Selma, Lord, Selma by Sheyann Webb and Rachel West Nelson; Selma 1965 by Charles Fager; and At Canaan’s Edge by Taylor Branch.
Ava DuVernay’s staging of Bloody Sunday in her film Selma never fails to send a hard shiver riding through me. It was quite useful in helping to set an emotional tone for my own recreation of that event.
I thank my first readers—Judi Smith, Marlon Pitts, Maria Majors, and Ernestine Wilson—for their encouragement and advice. I also thank Judi for her usual vigilance in snaring inconsistent spelling and comma misuse and abuse.
I thank Amanda Gibson for her eagle-eyed copyediting; she helped me avoid more than one embarrassing continuity error.
I thank my editor, Doug Seibold, for his insightful attention to details of character and motivation. The book is significantly better for having him at the helm.
I thank my wife, Marilyn, for forty-plus years of love and support and for being sunshine on my cloudy days.
And I thank God for grace, which is, as the songwriter testified, amazing.
LEONARD PITTS, JR.
BOWIE, MD, DECEMBER 28, 2023