Thank you first to my amazing agent, Saba Sulaiman: Your enthusiastic embrace of Sammie and David, and your certainty that you could find the right editor and house for my manuscript, were beautiful, shining gifts. And you did connect me with the best editor ever in Courtney Stevenson. Courtney, your gentle, thoughtful questions and suggestions have made my characters truer and this book infinitely better; working with you has been a joyous, exciting adventure. Let me also offer a humble and stunned thank you to the entire HarperCollins team; I had no idea you were all there, until you were: Catherine San Juan, Vanessa Nuttry, Shona McCarthy, Emma Meyer and the entire marketing team, Kristopher Kam, and Andrea Pappenheimer and the amazing sales team. Thank you also to copy editor Jessica White, and to my sensitivity reader, who wants to remain anonymous.
Thank you to my fellow writer’s group writers. Some of you read chapters; some of you read larger sections, and some of you read the entire manuscript, more than once even. All of you gave of your hearts, your honesty, and your writerly wisdom: Jennifer Lang, Karen Gershowitz, Liz Burk, Aileen Hewitt, Werner Hengst (of blessed memory), Paul Phillips, Cynthia Ehrenkrantz, and Jean Halperin; and Gerry Hawkins, Ian Berger, Dan Shapiro, Helen Chayefsky, Julie Coraggio, Kimberly Marcus, and Cindy McCraw Dircks. Cindy, thank you is not enough; I owe you flowers and chocolate and maybe even a puppy. Your persistent insistence that my story was ready for the world is the reason I sent it out. What luck I met you at that New York SCBWI conference.
I have relied upon the love and enthusiastic support of my beautiful extended family. To my sisters Amanda, Clara, and Jodie: being with you, your spouses, and your delicious kids is nothing less than magic; it lights me up. Amanda, thank you for talking me down from several ledges; you may be younger, but you are so, so much wiser.
Thank you, Aviva, for the chocolate mousses, front porch evenings, more Shabbat dinners than I can count, and, most important, your steady friendship.
My children, Eli, Noah, and Maggie: Thank you for not telling me I was strange when I gave up a paying job to sit at home and write, for sometimes even seeming a little bit proud of me, and for allowing me to snatch colorful bits of your lives and weave them into the tapestry of my writing.
Peter: Thank you somehow seems like the wrong thing to say to you. I had no idea, when we met in the hall of our apartment building in Park Slope, how deep and total and vital a love could become. I am grateful for you every day, always.