Lehigh University has given me an enormous amount of support to write and complete this novel. Many thanks to Donald Hall, Scott Gordon, and Dawn Keetley for their many kindnesses. Thanks too to my accomplished colleagues in the English Department, Zoellner Arts Center, Africana Studies, American Studies, and the Creative Writing Program.
The people that love you see something in you that you didn’t know yourself. This book could not have been possible without the help, influence and love of the following people: Edward Jones, Sigrid Nunez, Roy Weaver, Ernest Gaines, Diane Gaines, Marjorie Hudson, Tina Wilson, Pat Towers, Lynn Mitchell, Joanie Mackowski, Viv Steele, Sylvia Robinson, Susan Schurman, Stan Patten, Sandra Govan, Deborah Sacarakis, Ruth Marcon, Ruth Ingram, William Clark, Lynn Clark, Annette McCann, Julie Manzo, Joseph Manzo, Seth Moglen, Kim Schaffer, Lee Upton, Margaret Moffet, Monica Najar, Marly Swick, Aisha Ginwalla, Angela Scott Ferencin, Carol Laub, Ruth Ingram, Maryann DiEdwardo, Carol Ann Fitzgerald, Marc Smirnoff, Honoree Jeffers, John Pettegrew, Trudy Lewis, Candy Dula, Vera Fennell, Sarah Stanlick, Michael Collier, Holona Ochs, Mellie Katakalos, Carol Laub, Kristin Handler, Brooke Rollins, Tamara Meyers, Julia Maserjian, Patricia Hempl, Amey Senape, Anand Prahlad, Tahya Keenan, Betsy Fifer, Ken Fifer, Jan Fergus, Beth Dolan, Joyce Hinnefeld, Ruth Knafo Setton, Rod Santos, Lynne McMahon, Nancy Kincaid. My parents and siblings: Brenda Gilreath Wray, Billy Powell, Keya, Kelly, Aimee, Joel, Marc, Brent, Mitchell. The Watts family, especially the formidable women: Mary Watts, Terry, Gale, Bernadette, Mary S., Savannah and Molly. Many thanks to my agent Ellen Geiger. I am so thankful for what you’ve done and everything you do. Park Road Books gave me my first reading of my first book in my home of North Carolina. Thank you for taking the chance on a newcomer. Ecco! Many thanks to the wonderful team that helped make this book a reality: Ashley Garland, Emma Dries, Eleanor Kriseman, Meghan Deans, Andrea Molitor, and Sonya Cheuse. I marvel at the intelligence and moxie of my extraordinary editor Megan Lynch. I’m so proud to say I’m with her.
Bob Watts is my husband and the love of my life. Thank you for helping me lie about my age, thank you for being a wonderful father, thank you for showing me love in action. How lucky I am that your town was dry.
I am grateful to my grandmother Ruby Powell Dula. How you survived the daily struggle and kept the hope and faith in the promise of a better world that you dreamed about but knew you probably wouldn’t see. You passed to all of us the necessity of the passion to keep on loving. I miss you every day.
The horse jumped over the fence. Your sentence made it in the book! Forever and ever, my dearest love, my baby Auden.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
STEPHANIE POWELL WATTS is an associate professor of English at Lehigh University, and has won numerous awards, including a Whiting Award, a Pushcart Prize, the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, and the Southern Women’s Writers Award for Emerging Writer of the Year. She was also a PEN/Hemingway finalist for her short-story collection We Are Taking Only What We Need.
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