I am grateful to those who helped me raise this book:

Editor Deborah Noyes Wayshak asked, believed, propelled.

Dan Baldwin made lightning strike during every brainstorm, and Leigh Brown Perkins’s keen insight was my flashlight through draft after draft.

A picnic on the Iowa prairie introduced me to Tugs Button and an extraordinary group of bookmakers, the Tall Grass Writers, whose joyful spirit keeps me writing: Michelle Edwards, Carol Gorman, Jacqueline Briggs Martin, and Claudia McGehee.

My mother ignited my passion for books and writing by placing a notebook in my one hand and a library card in the other. That library card led me to my own Miss Lucy, Lucy Selander at the Roosevelt branch of the Minneapolis Public Library. Her power to divine the right book for the right moment enchanted my childhood.