Foremost acknowledgment goes to my editor, Alyssa Miele: If only there existed a version of Rainworks for stories, so her many contributions to this book could come shining through . . . but I hope she know that the marks she left are indelible to me. (Ha! A set of ellipses she can’t put a red line through—I couldn’t resist, Alyssa!)
Special thanks to my agent, Holly Root, for being both trusted blocker and badass jammer with respect to my publishing career.
I would not have been able to plot or execute this story without the patient (no pun intended; well, maybe just a little, in honor of Amelia’s dad) guidance of Dr. Douglas Mogul. You might think someone who holds the impressive title of medical director of pediatric liver transplant at a hospital as esteemed as Johns Hopkins would not be as gracious about answering so many of my truly ignorant questions. But Dr. Mogul was that and more as he helped me find inventive solutions to my dilemma of “How can I have a terminally ill patient who spends very little time in a hospital and is asymptomatic enough to do all these other things I want her to be able to do?” I am truly thankful for his guidance, and take full responsibility for any errors I may have made in interpreting the information he shared. I would also like to make mention here of an app that Dr. Mogul has created as part of a Johns Hopkins study to help parents of newborns identify signs of gastrointestinal illness or problems with their baby’s liver. It’s free and is called PoopMD+. Spread the word!
I also leaned heavily on other experts in their medical fields to provide information and fact-checking as I wrote. These include Lisa Bos in Endoscopy at Rhode Island Hospital; Chris Pierce, nurse practitioner at University Emergency Medicine Foundation and ED nurse at RI Hospital; Claire Watson, development and coordinations coordinator at New England Donor Services; and her clinical staff.
Further gratitude to those in the biliary atresia Facebook group who welcomed my intrusion, offered requested information or steered me to valuable resources that could and, in the exceptional cases of Jen Alpard and Amy Montgomery, allowed me to interview them about their personal relationships with the disease.
I am so appreciative of all the time given by one and all and, once again, any errors in text are mine alone.
An extra special dose of love and thanks to Pintip Dunne for helping me conceive of Will during a late-night conference sleepover and for checking me every step of the way to ensure I was accurately portraying him as a proud Thai American. I treasure all the care and time she took in allowing me to form a greater understanding of and appreciation for her experiences and her culture.
Gratitude to Dygo Tosa for taking time away from teaching Latin to high school students (including my own) to help me with the sundial mottos.
A hearty “Cheers!” to my Down Under mate (and talented author) Sharon Johnson for checking Sibby’s Aussie-speak for accuracy.
Speaking of talented authors, I have many more to thank for lending their writerly muscles and hearts to aiding me in creating, shaping, and polishing this story, including: Dana Levy, Darcy Woods, Pintip Dunne (yes, again), Jen Brooks, Kate Brauning, Lori Goldstein, and Gail Nall. You are treasures and I am so lucky to count each of you as friends.
To the entire team at Harper, so many of whom work tirelessly and anonymously behind the scenes to get books into readers’ hands and who do so with passion and integrity, a humble thank-you. Special shout-outs to editorial director Rosemary Brosnan, copy editor Jessica White, and publicist Aubrey Churchward. An extra-special thanks to Sophia Drevenstam and Molly Jacques and designer Jessie Gang for a cover I positively drool over and one so perfectly befitting a story about a chalk artist/hand letterer.
And lastly, to you readers: it’s all nothing without you! Thank you for seeking out stories to help you figure out the world—it lets us authors write them to do the same and this author, in particular, is very grateful to have that opportunity.