This book has been quite the journey for me. It touches many places I have wanted to write about, and gives voice to growing up as a child in Mississippi during a dark and yet explosively amazing period of change.
I appreciate encouragement along the way from many friends who have been willing to discuss, debate, and help me find the words. Thank you to Christine Taylor-Butler, Markeeta Wilkerson, and Jennifer Fritz for listening to me babble and struggle and try to put this into perspective. I really appreciate my agent, Erin Murphy, who kept saying, “You know, all this stuff you talk about from when you were little, don’t you want to write about it yet?” And it has been wonderful to have an editor who didn’t cover her head and scream, “No!” when I dove into this tale with all of its wild complexities. Sylvie Frank is brave and supportive, and most important, willing to listen, and able to help me listen when I forget to do so.
My stepmother, Bonnie Vaught, went intrepidly into the new Oxford (very different from the Oxford of my childhood and college years) and helped me with some locations and descriptions. My cousin, Camille Mitchell, hunted down restaurant info. A very sweet lady at the University of Mississippi, whose name I do not know, but who sits in front of the door to the Ventress Hall turret, answered my telephone questions with kindness and patience, and she never even laughed at me. And, as always, my family put up with me going silent and putting on headphones and playing the same music over and over for months as I wrote, rewrote, then tried again one more time. A book is never a solo effort. Many people contribute, whether they know it or not, and whether or not I remember to say THANK YOU.
So, um, THANK YOU. To all of you, and to anyone I might have forgotten, and always, always, to the readers. You get the biggest THANK YOU of all!