Harley House is a real place, although vastly different from when I lived in it. I’ve used as many facts as I could to make it as accurate as possible but have had to resort to artistic license to make it fit into my story.
The historical facts of the time period are taken from eyewitness accounts, archival sources, and well-researched historical records. Any errors in recreating fact as fiction are completely mine.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book would never have been written without the constant e-mails from readers who’d read Falling Home and After the Rain and wanted to find out what happened to Maddie Warner, the eldest daughter of Joe and Harriet from those earlier books. This novel, in many ways, is Maddie’s story. It takes place almost ten years after the end of After the Rain, and I hope it puts to rest the question of what happened to Maddie and the rest of the characters from Walton, Georgia.
Thanks to my editor, Cindy Hwang, and my agent, Amy Berkower, for their patience in listening to me talk about my ideas for this story for so long, and then waiting for this book to finally be written. I hope we can all agree that it was worth the trauma and the wait. Thank you both for your editorial insight, which saved the manuscript from being shoved under my bed and forgotten.
To terrific and talented author and friend Stephanie Scott, who graciously agreed to read the book for any errors in my Britishisms despite being in the throes of the hectic months before the publication of her first novel. I cannot thank you enough.
And thank you to Julie Zabrodska for generously agreeing to read through and correct the Czech phrases and references for accuracy and authenticity.
A huge thanks for the encouragement and extremely keen editorial eye of the amazing Genevieve Gagne-Hawes. She saw beauty and possibility in the first drafts that were invisible even to me, and helped me pull the good stuff from the wreckage. This book could not have survived without you—so thank you.
As always, thanks to my partners in crime, my critique partners Wendy Wax and Susan Crandall, who have been with me since the beginning twenty years ago, when my first book was published, and have read every word I’ve written. Thanks for always being there, and for pulling me back from the ledge when necessary.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Karen White is the New York Times bestselling author of more than twenty-five novels, including the Tradd Street series, Dreams of Falling, The Night the Lights Went Out, Flight Patterns, The Sound of Glass, A Long Time Gone, and The Time Between. She is the coauthor of All the Ways We Said Goodbye, The Glass Ocean, and The Forgotten Room with New York Times bestselling authors Beatriz Williams and Lauren Willig. She grew up in London but now lives with her husband and two dogs near Atlanta, Georgia.
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