AS ALWAYS, WITH LOVE TO MY WIFE, PATRICIA, WHO early on placed her hand firmly in mine for this crazy literary journey, and our two sons, Carter and Christopher, who survived that journey to find their own crazy path, and so inspire us onward every day.
For Charles Sheerin, a great teacher, preacher, and humanitarian, who filled our school days with literary lightning, passionate reading, and the love that allowed us to laugh at life’s absurdities and, most importantly, our own. Charlie, your life made the world a better place, and your sweet laughter echoes endlessly on the river of Time.
The journey proceeds, and friends, new and old, continue to come and lend a helping hand. My profound thanks to my editor—one of the very greatest editors of our generation—Allen Peacock, who early on blew the breath of life into my sails and kept our frail craft steady and moving forward, when most had long given up on epic length in the modern novel. Allen’s uncanny eye for the good, bad, and indifferent made for the necessary pruning, while embracing the good stuff. Allen, you’re still the best.
And what can I say about the legendary Carol Edwards, copy editor to so many great writers and publishers. Carol found the flaws and got them corrected and reinforced our confidence in the integrity of the whole. And she caught the one fatal flaw in any novel of length, and so helped to bring our time traveler home, truly home . . . where it needed to be. For that crucial insight alone, you have my profoundest gratitude.
Our proofreader, Patricia Fogarty, diligently captured all our slipups with great skill and patience.
And for Marc Estrin, my editor at Fomite Press, I have only the greatest respect, not just because he believed in Time’s Betrayal from the get-go, but because he unstintingly put his heart and soul into making it even better, pointing out many things that only another fine writer and editor, polymath and musician, might catch. And thanks, too, to Donna Bister, production manager at Fomite Press, for all her support and help shepherding our project forward.
To my agent, Mitchell Waters, at Curtis Brown, thanks for believing in Time’s Betrayal . . . from the first few pages, ten minutes after first receiving the manuscript, through all the ups and downs of the submission process. Your confidence in the book got us through—and yes, I think, hope, our novel would make your client, the late, great Louis Auchincloss, proud, if not a little amused.
And the design and production team headed by Drew Stevens—my hats off to you, sir! What a marvelous feel for the elegant font and grace notes to make the book sing in the reader’s eye and ear. And what a steady, competent, and always reassuring voice getting us through the production process with style and humor.
Penguin’s Jason Booher provided us with a stellar cover, combining design brilliance with a deep sensitivity to the narrative, and so producing cover art that is as close to a mirror of the story within as can be imagined. Jason, we and all your colleagues stand in awe.
The publicity team headed up by David Ratner and Emi Battaglia is simply as good as it gets: a strong right arm getting Time’s Betrayal launched, and hopefully loved.
A special thanks to Tom Weil, an old and great friend, and an incredibly astute reader, who, with an unfailing eagle eye, caught a bunch of typos that we’d all missed.
And now to a few of the invisibles who inspired some of the players in Time’s Betrayal. Their names are known to only a few, their lives and legends and foibles to even fewer—lives that hopefully echo down the river of Time in these pages: Charles Sheerin, Paul Abry, Norris Getty, Richard Irons, and others who shall remain nameless. Gentlemen, your lives made all the difference to those many young men who benefited from your pastoral care and inspiration. And to that generation of greats I’d like to add my thanks to “coach” Jake Congleton, and Charlie Alexander and Jonathan Choate, who shepherded my own boys in the classics and math, and their successors: Nishad Das, Hoyt Taylor, and David Prockop in math and science, John Tulp in classics, and, most especially, Ted Goodrich, teacher of English, who has galvanized the younger generation so brilliantly, inspiring so many in the love of great books. And last but not least, a legendary teacher of the classics and famed archaeologist, who, though never quite inhabiting a character herein, inspired so many of the pages of Time’s Betrayal: the inimitable Hugh Sackett.