I OWE SO much to so many, and so does this book. I would not have begun it at all were it not for Gene Borowitz, and would not have finished it were it not for the many people who have offered their help and encouragement along the way. Linda Sue Baugh read and critiqued all my early chapters as they were written, and offered much wise and sensitive guidance. Sigfried Gold’s writing companionship was invaluable in keeping me on course. Joan Matlack believed in the book, promoted it, and pushed me to publish it when I fully expected that it would live out its life in the bottom drawer of my desk; I happily call her my unofficial agent and have her to thank for the fact that it did not. The members of my book club family of nearly 40 years, including Joan, Libby Ester, Laura Tilly, Alexa Hand, Barbara Beck, Beth Kaplan, and Karen Reeves (who went out of her way to keep my spirits alive during the hard times) were generous and supportive in their critique, and the late Sarah Hamilton went above and beyond book club protocol and gave the opening sections of the manuscript a thorough copy-edit. The late Barbara Muday was a mainstay of support. My graduation committee at the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis, including Peter Shabad, Dale Moyer, and Lucy Freund, supported my final project towards graduation, which included a presentation of reflections on this book. I am forever grateful to Deborah Robertson and Gibson House for giving my novel the chance to see the light of day, and to Deb for sharing her vision of a literary/musical nexus with me. I am fortunate that the late Terrance Turner, perhaps the foremost anthropologist of the peoples of Amazonia, gave the book a careful reading and offered me many useful suggestions as well as enthusiastic support. I thank Steve Dawson for his encouragement of me as a writer and for his transformative role in my musical life. Poornima Apte’s able editorial skills saved me from myself many times over, and I have been grateful to have the guidance of Mary Bisbee-Beek on those aspects of creating a successful book from which I am most likely to recoil. I’m grateful to Christian Fuenfhausen and Karen Sheets for their elegant design work and helpful image-sleuthing, and also thank the plant information people at the Chicago Botanic Garden for their research help. Many others have offered publishing advice or have read drafts of the manuscript and made hands-on suggestions, or else have offered general encouragement, including (alphabetically) Karen Smith Biastre, Jena Camp, Mark Caro, Kathy and Paul Davidson, Karin Deam, Bob Drucker, John Friedman, David Fuller, John and Joyce Fuller, Denise Gibbon, Karen Gilman, Eve Gordon, Ingrid Graudins, Lorel Greene, Jane Hamilton, Karen Hanmer, Tom Jenks, Tim Keating, Lucia and Waud Kracke, Cecile Margulies, Tom Recht, Fran Rivkin, Ann-Louise Silver, Saadya Sternberg, David Vigoda and Peter Zeldow. The writing of this manuscript was supported by an Artist Fellowship from the Illinois Arts Council. I am grateful to the Writers-Editors International Writing Awards, NAAP, the Fish Literary Awards, the James Jones Award for the Novel, the Eugene Walter Prize for the Novel, the Illinois Arts Council Poetry Awards, and the other organizations that have supported my writing with awards, honorable mentions, finalist designations, cash prizes and other forms of recognition over the years. I thank the Unicorn Café for providing me a refuge in which to write, and am grateful to Sophie Harp and Natalya Harp for their insight and inspiration, and also to Sophie for her efforts to help me arrive at the book’s title. Most of all, I thank my husband, Steve Harp, for offering his support and encouragement every step of the way, and for teaching me how to value my own work in the midst of this life-I-am-incapable-of-living.