Acknowledgments

I would like to thank early mentors of this book, including John Edgar Wideman, Noy Holland, and Ursula Hegi, as well as my UMass “fiction chicks” group—Bess Fairfield Stokes, Kate Southwood, Michelle Valois, Patti Horvath, Jane Rosenberg, Jeanie Tietjen, and Deb McCutchen. I would also like to thank my Boston fiction group—Karen Halil, Kande Culver, Stan Yarbo, Roy Ahn, and Sumita Mukherji—and other Boston readers and friends—Daphne Kalotay, Lara Wilson, Margot Livesey, Kim Shuckra Gomez, Maria Gapotchenko, and Laura Harrison. Thanks also for the support of Megan Thomas Paulson and Mary Wright, longtime friends.

Thanks to my agent, Esmond Harmsworth, for sticking with me, and my publisher, Other Press, for offering such a professional, supportive, and rewarding publishing experience. Many thanks to my editor, Corinna Barsan; my tireless publisher, Judith Gurewich; my publicist, Terrie Akers; and their marketing guru, Paul Kozlowski, as well as to the entire Other Press staff. Thanks also to the Random House sales team for their energy and commitment.

The following organizations offered time and support for writing this book: the UMass-Amherst MFA program, the MacDowell Colony, the Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers’ Conferences, Bucknell University and Philip Roth for the Philip Roth Writer-in-Residency program, PEN New England, Grub Street, and Boston University.

Finally, I’d like to thank my family for their continued support and love; my mother, Lorene Hoover, my sister Lisa Carstens and the Carstens family, my brother David Hoover, and the Marshall family, in particular my uncle Lowell Marshall, who endured ceaseless questions about farm life and practices. Thanks to my late aunt, Irene Israel, for her love, and especially to my late father, Lee Hoover, whom I miss.