I owe more than I can say to—
Every scholar, archivist, and activist whose work made the very idea of a history of American women and religion possible, without whom or without whose patience, ethics, fortitude, and brilliance there would have been no way for me to write a book like this, and without whom we would have no way to reimagine the past, no way to make room for the future.
Anyone who read this work in its early stages: Beth Loffreda, Andy Fitch, and Frieda Knobloch; all of my peers and teachers in the MFA program at the University of Wyoming, as well as the American Studies program; Erin Forbes and Quincy Newell and their profoundly shaping course, “Religion & American Women Writers”; Ariel Gore, for reasons too numerous and going back too far in time to name.
Each friend, teacher, and voice in the wilderness who has read, edited, coached, inspired, been interviewed by me, or opened up this work or the thinking and writing that led to it, whether or not they know it: Amber Stewart (forever in her editing debt), Robert Balkovich, Chanelle Bergeron, Lina Misitzis, Lily Herman, Jennifer Stohlmann, Laura Henriksen, Hallie Flynn, Jess Monday, Susan Dewey, Seth and Jen Nelson, Michael Smith, Robert Snyderman, Yanara Friedland, Gabriella Hook, Molly Bernard, Sofi Thanhauser, Kelly Hatton, Rebecca Golden, Grace Kredell, Rachel Levitsky, Ellery Washington, Suzanne Verderber, Benjamin Lytal, Samantha Hunt, Cecilia Muhlstein, Sallie Ann Glassman, “Michael & the Millays,” and Deborah Yanagisawa. Thanks to Tom Robbins’s generously corresponding with me all those years ago. Global thanks to the Pratt Institute BFA Writing Program where nearly everything began (eschatologically speaking) and then began again years later. Thanks also to every faith community that has ever welcomed me over the threshold and every student who has trusted me enough to transverse a whole semester by my side—me as captain, them as first mate. Special shout-out to the “Bad Girls” and to the senior thesis “heroesses,” whose creative manuscripts were ushered into their final forms simultaneously to my own, and who modeled a depth of compassion, devotion, intelligence, and mutual support that I’m still being moved by.
The Millay Colony, whose nourishment came at the absolute right time—in spirit, in company, in space. The editing boot camps in “Bronkers” and Brooklyn.
The Pratt Faculty Development Fund for facilitating an important research trip to New Orleans that unexpectedly brought everything together.
New Day Methodist Church in the Bronx, which revealed for me, at the eleventh hour, how a Christian community can be a site of resistance.
My whole family—both of origin and my Sweeney in-laws—for their unflagging support and excitement, and especially to my parents, for being champions of my writing, and of my will to write, from the very beginning.
My husband, [Christopher] Sweeney, brilliant scholar of religion and fearless adventurer, who for ten years now has been my comrade and confidant through a thousand wild days and nights, and who (to take a phrase from Richard Rodriguez) “has read and edited every page of this book with a rigor and compassion that define for me the meaning of love.”
My agent (and wonderful writer) W. Ralph Eubanks, who got the work when not that many other people got it, and who connected me to a publisher he knew would get it, too.
My brave, visionary, and supportive team at Counterpoint Press, which has done the otherwise thought-to-be-impossible task of remaining an independent, author-centered publisher for twenty years: Jack Shoemaker, Jennifer Alton, Kelli Trapnell, Oriana Leckert, Megan Fishmann, Shannon Price, and Alisha Gorder.
To the virtuosic editors I worked with before I knew I was working on a book: Mensah Demary, Yuka Igarashi, Austin Tremblay, Arvind Dilawar. Early versions of “Dear Linda” appeared in The Airship; “Our Bodies, Our Smoke” in the Owl Eye Review; and “This Building Is Yours” in Catapult.
My creative research assistants, Carliene Thompson and Anjette Rostock, both of whom are going to conquer the world.
Finally, to everyone who passed away during the final year of writing this book, for whom we are still grieving: my grandmother Gale Adair, my grandmothers-in-law Peggy Rodway and Patricia Sweeney, Uncle Dean Stickler, Uncle Johnny Billington, and lifelong family friend Pat Parker.