ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you to my parents for the education, and for their infinite patience and inexhaustible faith. Thank you to my children for their enthusiasm, cheerleading, daydreaming, and forgiveness; and to my sister for keeping me honest. Thank you to my editor, Leis Pederson, for making it better than it was; to my agent, Holly Root, for believing in what it could be; and to my cover artist, Craig White, for seeing Olivia more clearly than I did. Thank you to David Bradford for his unerring critical eye; to Molly for her graphic design genius and generosity; to ARWA for the education and encouragement, the challenge and acceptance; to Scott for editing and managing and consoling and babysitting; and to my crit group—ladies, you’re the pitts! Thank you to Deborah Morrison for being a mentor in writing, parenting, and adulthood; to Steve Dutton for riding to the rescue more than once; and to Jill White (and Scott again) for that seminal Irish trip. Thank you to Linda Ingmanson for saying no, and Chris Keeslar for saying yes. Thank you to Alison Greco for what she knows about psychiatry; to Sunil Sebastian for what he knows about physics; to Beth Henson for what she knows about medicine; and to Michael DiLeo for what he knows about writing and for the coffee.

Thank you to the mythic damned, my friends of contradictions, with wings of stone and hearts on fire, for the inspiration and the company.