The Correspondent: A Novel by Virginia Evans - 61

When I was still in early draft stages of this book, the six-year-old son of some of our dear friends grew very sick over a few months, then died. Time stopped. The horrific, wrecking events of that fall and into December, when we woke up each morning with the one thing on our minds, changed me. I sat quietly with Sybil during that time as the saturation of grief worked its way into our lives, where it remains. Losing Wade bore significantly on this work of fiction and in a way, this book is also to you, Nicki and Kent, with love.

The road to publication for me was long and plagued by terrible weather for years, but I was not alone. Many people have been generous to me and helped me along the way, too many to name, however I would like to list a few.

I will be grateful forever to Amy Einhorn, who bought this book with real enthusiasm, right at the moment I was ready to give up writing and go to law school. This was a turning point in my life, and working with Amy and her wonderful colleagues Lori Kusatzky and Rachel Berkowitz, as well as benefiting from the smarts of the rest of the team at Crown, Tara Timinsky at Grandview, Lily Cooper—all of it has been the most fun I’ve ever had.

A few years earlier, my agent, Hilary McMahon, took me on when hundreds of others weren’t interested, and she told me You have what it takes . She never faltered in believing that, even when I did, and her assurance restored a lot of confidence I had lost. Now we share a friendship, which is what I’d dreamed of.

In Trinity, Carlo Gébler took me under his wing and gave me the gift of his time. His ongoing mentorship is inexplicably valuable to me, and his help on this novel was clear-eyed and transformative. Eoin McNamee tended my work with meticulous care, as if it were his own, and from these, and my other professors in the creative writing master’s program, Claire Keegan, Kevin Power, and Harry Clifton, as well as the friends and colleagues I made in many of my fellow students, I learned volumes about the craft as well as the art of fiction, and I am indebted. That was a wonderful time, a perfect year in Ireland that enriched and altered the course of my life in so many beautiful ways. I carry it with me and look back on it in wonder. My heart is always there, in Ireland.

Others I’d like to recognize and thank for their help with this novel specifically include Peggy Kent and Mike Robinson, who helped me with matters of legal accuracy, and early readers: Ashley Hill, Margaret Ann Speakman, David Speakman, Tory Dickerson, and Francesca Capossela. My gratitude going much further back to Gray Wilson, Kally Punger, Inman Majors, Teri Brennan, and the late Joan Frederick.

I’m tremendously thankful for the many friends who have walked beside me on the road, reading my work, bearing witness to many drafts and failures and disappointments for years on decades. Thank you especially to Kelly Whitener and Kaili Emmrich, my long-enduring cheerleaders, and Sorcha Hamilton, my trusted first reader, singular and treasured. To my family, who kept believing in a future we couldn’t see. My parents, Claire Ficker and Tim Ficker, my granddaddy, Jack Vellines, and my in-laws, Joyce Evans, and Jon Evans, who died before publication. To my siblings, Hannah and Kyle, who are very dear to me.

I’m so grateful for and to my absolutely brilliant children, Jack and Mae, for their patience and love as they show me the magic.

I do not see a way I could have gutted out the long, difficult years if I had not had my husband, Mark, by my side—my partner in the truest sense, hip to hip and shoulder to shoulder. How grateful I am to have found you. You keep the boat right. As it turns out, I got everything I wanted. Every moment of my life with you has been a kindness, and that is why this book is to you.

James 1:17