ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A million thanks to Dorian Karchmar and Simone Blaser, and to the brilliant team at Scribner: Whitney Frick, Alexis Gargagliano, Nan Graham, and Kelsey Smith.
Along the way, this book was made markedly better by invaluable feedback from Nick Arvin, Eric Bennett, Sarah Funke Butler, Justin Cronin, the amazing Kurt Gutjahr, Krista Parris, and Dr. Sebastian Schubl. Thanks to Damiano Bellafri and Harald Franzen for lightning-fast translation services.
I will be eternally grateful for the time and space provided by the MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Hambidge Colony in Georgia, and the Allen Room at the New York Public Library. The Guggenheim Foundation provided crucial funding while I found my way with this novel.
As always, I am indebted to the kindness of the Vanderclan: Modur, Papito, Jefe, Amy, and my three-foot-tall roommate, who miraculously slept through the night so that I could write into the darkness. I hope one day she will read this and be proud.
© EAMON HICKEY
JENNIFER VANDERBES is the author of the novels Easter Island and Strangers at the Feast, and is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and a New York Public Library Cullman Fellowship. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and Granta and has been translated into sixteen languages. She lives in New York City with her daughter.
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ALSO BY JENNIFER VANDERBES
Easter Island
Strangers at the Feast
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 by Jennifer Vanderbes
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First Scribner hardcover edition February 2014
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN 978-1-4391-6705-2 (ebook)
CONTENTS
Epigraph
Prologue
Part I: 1941–1944
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Part II: 1944
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Part III: November 1944
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Epilogue 1947
Author’S Note
Acknowledgments
About Jennifer Vanderbes