I originally wrote this book (then titled “The Night Before the Day After”) in 2006. My agent at the time, Hilary McMahon, should be acknowledged for making a lot of effort to sell it. Even though I got great feedback, most publishers weren’t interested in fiction that referenced 9/11 in 2006 – a few amazing books were being published, but not that many. Especially fiction. It was, and still is, such a raw period in history. People were still trying to make sense of it. I put this book in a box for a while, but thought about it often. I pulled out a bit of it ten years later, the starting chapter at the time, about Sophie and Paul and the Wedgewood butter dish and cleaning up the dinner party, and sent it in for publication with Sam Hiyate’s Don’t Talk to Me About Love magazine in May 201
