It has been two weeks now and I’m still waiting for Myrle to call. If she doesn’t soon, I will call her again. I’ll keep you updated.
Much Love,
Aunt Renie
Acknowledgments
Thanks for the support and encouragement of my readers Steven Beeber, Karen Halil, Laura Harrison, Daphne Kalotay, Linda Schlossberg, Dawn Tripp, and Lara Wilson. Thanks also to my longtime writing friends Patti Horvath, Jane Rosenberg Laforge, Kate Southwood, Elisabeth Fairfield Stokes, and Michelle Valois, as well as my writing cohorts Sari Boren, Steven Brykman, Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich, and Ilan Mochari.
Thanks to the GrubStreet staff and friends for doing what you do and being who you are, especially Lisa Borders, Eve Bridburg, and Chris Castellani, for helping build the Novel Incubator Program, which made me a better teacher and writer. Thanks to all our Incubees for your energy and talent. You inspire me every day.
Thanks to Brandeis University for allowing me to teach and write “in residence.” Thanks especially to Steve McCauley for shepherding me through the process.
Thanks to my editor, Corinna Barsan, for her continued zeal this second time around and her exceedingly smart pencil, as well as to the entire Grove Atlantic staff. Thanks to my agent Esmond Harmsworth and the Zachary, Shuster, Harmsworth agency team, notably Janet Silver and Lane Zachary.
Thanks especially to my family: my mother, Lorene Hoover, for inspiration and editing; my sister, Lisa Carstens, and Mike, Hannah, and Cayla; and my brother, David Hoover.
Thanks always to Randy Bailey for his love, patience, and support, for putting up with this strange kind of life, and for giving me a second family.
Finally, thanks to my late cousin, Hazel Hoover, for her offhand remark that “you look just like one of your great-aunts,” and to my late Aunt Irene (Renie) Israel, who despite being ill, opened a family album in her lap and told me about the two sisters who “disappeared,” showing me the photograph that began the whole thing.