Acknowledgments
Thank you to Mark Whipple, Dave Eckstein, and Catherine Rockwood, without whose encouragement, this novel would have been abandoned in its infancy.
To Von Long, Diana Hardy, Erin Furby, Kirsten Edwards, Bill Burns, Dave Coffman, Jeff Lyman, Jessie Harris, Donna Royston, Robin Buehler, and especially Don Schank, for their support and advice, and to Danielle Ackley-McPhail and the Yesterday’s Dreamers, for all their useful ideas concerning the craft of writing itself.
To James Hyder, without whom this book would contain two copies of Chapter Seven and none of Chapter Eight.
To my wise editor, Jim Frenkel, and my noble agent, Richard Curtis.
To Lisa at Mama Lisa’s World (www.mamalisa.com/world), for her wonderful collection of Italian Lullabies, and to Ernestine Shargool, for her beautiful translations.
To George Bernard Shaw, whose title Don Juan in Hell, this one echoes.
And, most important, to my mother, Jane Lamplighter, without whose selfless devotion to her grandchildren this book literally could not have been written.
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