Author’s AcknowledgmentsI feel obliged to cite the preface of Karen Barad’s Meeting the Universe Halfway: “The past is never finished. It cannot be wrapped up like a package, or a scrapbook, or an acknowledgment.” Thus, my thanks here must inevitably remain incomplete. I am grateful first to Michael Fulton, my Yoda, Gandalf, Dumbledore, and Spock, without whom none of my work, let alone this book, would have reached the world. Ruthie Knox and Mary Ann Rivers for supporting this story and its vision. Maxine Vande Vaarst for believing in its protagonist. Jennifer Boylan for nurturing the book from its seedling beginnings with honesty. Adam Wilson for his counsel and his confidence in the early drafts. My peers in Advanced Projects in Prose at Barnard and Advanced Fiction at Columbia for thei
