I began this novel on a hot summer afternoon in 2014, sitting on the deck of a small lake cabin in northern Vermont and watching a pair of loons dive under the clear, cool water. I finished it six months later over lunch at Three Penny Taproom, and in between, I wrote it in all kinds of places. It was the fastest, by far, I have ever completed a novel, and I can say now that I wrote it with a wind at my back because of the support of so many people.
John Cheever once said that writing is not a competitive sport, which is true, but publishing is a team one. My gratitude begins with everyone at Thomas Dunne Books, starting with Tom himself. Every writer should be fortunate enough to have such a champion. I want to thank Pete Wolverton for his insight and support of this book from the beginning. And, of course, my talented, hardworking, and brilliant editor, Anne Brewer, who helped this novel sing a little more every step of the way.
I want to thank my agent, Marly Rusoff, who sets the standard for representation and to whom I am so grateful for her wisdom, counsel, and advocacy.
I want to thank the Vermont College of Fine Arts community for all your support as colleagues and friends, and allowing me to be an artist as well as your president.
I want to thank my family, my parents, my brothers and sisters, and Tia and my daughter, Sarah, for all your support of my work.
While this is not an autobiographical novel by any measure and is entirely a work of fiction, one of the pleasures of writing it was revisiting my own path toward becoming a writer, those first tentative and awkward steps I took, like Henry, many years ago. And so I want to thank, as well, those early teachers of mine: Jon Maney, Mary Caponegro, and the late Deborah Tall, who once pulled me aside and told me I had the talent to do this mysterious thing, and that made all the difference to a twenty-one-year-old writer. I also want to thank Deborah’s husband, the poet David Weiss, who, with enormous kindness and generosity, once bailed me out of a thicket of trouble. I haven’t forgotten.