Acknowledgments

I owe a great debt to my manuscript readers, whose feedback was essential to improving my story. They include: Peggy Baseman, Irene and Alex Belozersky, Richard Billman, Dorritt Billings, Laura Jackson Brophy, Andrew Curran, Lindsay Easter, Nancy Hausman, Barbara Hazard, Alicia Jackson, Joan Sawyer, Tim Sawyer, and Catherine Ventura.

Jim Gorman gave me the benefit of his tremendous knowledge of plants, horticultural history, and Bostoniana, and saved me from many errors. If I have planted Sciadopitys at Mount Auburn a few years before its actual introduction, it is not for lack of advice to the contrary on Jim’s part. For all his help and support, I am much indebted; any remaining botanical errors are mine alone.

All the staff at Mount Auburn, especially Meg Whitman in the Archives department, have helped me greatly in understanding the cemetery’s dramatic changes over time and its cultural significance. The nineteenth-century staff are entirely figures of my creation, however, and no one is to blame for their foibles but I.

The world owes thanks also to Brian Sullivan for transcribing the diaries of a nineteenth-century Harvard librarian, which have given us all a wonderfully fine-textured narrative of life in Cambridge before the Civil War.

To the great Harriet Jacobs I owe the idea of a fugitive slave running a boarding house in Cambridge. Her story, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, which I first read as a freshman in college, stuck with me all these years and helped me find Roxanne.

The debt I owe to Catherine Ventura and Joan Sawyer, for encouragement, logistics, and outright nagging, I can only hope one day to repay. I wish also to thank my friends Fran Forman for a fantastic cover image and Nancy Hausman for all-around support.

Finally, my love and gratitude go to my daughter Eleanor Ray, without whose sharp critical eye and prodding this book would never have been finished, and without whose thoughtful suggestions it would have been infinitely the poorer. Love you, El.