Acknowledgments

            To my agent, Scott Mendel, thank you for finding a loving home for Gullboy (and for rescuing the manuscript from your cold, cruel slush pile), you, sir, are a mensch among mensches.

            To Perseus/Counterpoint, David Shoemaker, thank you for your faith in the manuscript, for your perceptive and artful editing skills and for ushering this book blinking into daylight. Thank you, Liz Maguire and JoAnn Miller for judging this novel worthy of publication. Liz Tzetzo, thank you for taking Gullboy under your wing from the day it first wailed on the doorstep of your house. Thanks, in advance, Jason Brantley, for charming the world into reading this tale (no pressure). Nicole Caputo and Trish Wilkinson, thank you for making this book beautiful to behold. My thanks to John Sherer

and Marty Gosser, without your marketing support, these pages are just another warehouse pulp pile. Thank you Beth Wright for your exacting copyediting. Thanks, Wesley Weissberg for making me sound good. And thank you production editors Carol Smith and Joe Bonyata, for keeping us all on track.

            Thanks to my family, especially to my Mom, Judith Rubenstein, for reading and re-reading Gullboy in all its iterations, and for unflagging optimism and encouragement. Thanks Grandma (Frances Abel), the pleasure you took in reading Gullboy made the writing of it worthwhile. Thanks Paul, my brother, for reading, proofreading and rooting me on, and for the gift of your music to work to besides. Mary Preston, brilliant first reader, aesthetic genius, and all-around babe, Mary, you make me pogo, thank you.

            Thanks Danny Shanahan, for your friendship and confidence in my work, for the drawings complementing this story, and for all the good times at Rhinebeck’s tennis courts, bars, and barbecues. Thank you, my friends Ken Schagrin, Rodger Doyle, and Sam Miserendino, Jr., for inspiring my best mischief. Laura Lapachin, Sara Wengert and Stan Jacoby thank you all for your generous enthusiasm for the book. Bruce Kuo, thanks for lending an ear on our runs through frozen Philadelphia.

            Frank Conroy, if you can hear me, when I began to write this book, I searched the knapsack you gave me years ago and found all the tools I needed, just as you had left them. I mourn you. Thanks to William and Dana Kennedy for your kind advice. Thank you John Calogero, for praising my ninth grade scribbling. And thanks David Watson, my fourth grade teacher, who made reading and writing forever magical.