To Linda Joyce, who, with her sharp eye and every deletion, comma, a well-placed expletive, made the book better.
To Amanda Ridout, because every time we drink a-merry and a-plenty at the Algonquin, a new project-idea-cover-title-contract springs forth. Clearly the Algonquin has remarkable drinks.
To Robert Gottlieb, for making the last seven years of my life possible, and to Claire Roberts, my new foreign rights director, for grown-up books and cookbooks and children’s books (special thanks to Lara Allen for that one) and the Trek Madone—I’m biking all the way to your house in Jersey to thank you for that one!
To my high school friend Kathie. Like that Baz Luhrmann song that advised me to keep my old friends, sometimes I wish I had.
To the hubby who looked after the mass of children while I was away and to Pavla Salacova O’Rourke (I can’t keep track of her last names, so fast and furious does she marry) who helped him and helps me every day, no grace and gratitude are enough.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PAULLINA SIMONS was born in the Soviet Union and immigrated to the United States as a child. She graduated from the University of Kansas and wrote her first novel, Tully, at twenty-nine. She has also published a cookbook, a memoir, and two children’s books, and has adapted The Bronze Horseman for the screen. She lives in New York with her husband and an alarming number of her once-independent children.
www.paullinasimons.com
/PaullinaSimonsAuthor
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ALSO BY PAULLINA SIMONS
FICTION
Tully
Red Leaves
Eleven Hours
The Bronze Horseman
Tatiana and Alexander
The Girl in Times Square
The Summer Garden
A Song in the Daylight
Children of Liberty
Bellagrand
Lone Star
NONFICTION
Six Days in Leningrad
COOKBOOK
Tatiana’s Table
CHILDREN’S BOOKS
I Love My Baby Because . . .
Poppet Gets Two Big Brothers
CREDITS
Cover design by Ploy Siripant
Cover photographs: © Colin Anderson / Getty Images; © Shutterstock (detail)
COPYRIGHT
The extract from “I Walked the Boulevard” is reprinted from COMPLETE POEMS 1904–1962, by E. E. Cummings, edited by George J. Firmage, by permission of W. W. Norton & Company. Copyright © 1991 by the Trustees for the E. E. Cummings Trust and George James Firmage.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Originally published in Great Britain in 2007 by HarperCollins Publishers.
FIRST U.S. EDITION
ISBN 978-0-06-244433-2
EPub Edition NOVEMBER 2016 ISBN 9780062444349
16 17 18 19 20 DIX/RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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