I’d like to thank Lyn White, the series editor, and Eva Mills, the publisher, who read and reread this as it went through its alchemical process to end up as this particular story. Also Catherine McCredie, a wonderfully insightful reader, for her comments and suggestions, and Sophie Splatt, who made editing an easy process and is responsible for this final polished version.
Others who helped with this project and who I’d like to acknowledge are Joyati Das from World Vision Australia, Mais from Avaaz, The World in Action group, and the reporters at Syria Deeply for telling the human stories of the war.
As always I’d like to thank my husband, Kerry, for being such a great supporter and our dog, Mahoney, for giving up his walk time more mornings than he could count while I was working and our cat, Farah, who didn’t do much for this story except stalk across the keyboard when she wanted attention and make me laugh when I least felt like it.