Lillian on Life (13 page)

Early encouragement and improvements for this book came from my gracious first-draft readers. Thank you, Charlotte Chiew, Tremaine du Preez, Alicia Erian, Hussein Khalifa, David Klopfenstein, Alyssa Landry and Nicole Stinton.

Thank you also, Andy Gurnett, for having me print and bind the manuscript so that you could read it like a book. Thank you for the interesting reflections that followed. And thank you, more than I can say, for proposing marriage.

If my mother weren't the writer Valerie Lester, I wouldn't have the sense of adventure that writing entails. If my brother weren't the writer Toby Lester, I wouldn't have such steady counsel in the wobbly times. If my agent weren't Barney Karpfinger, whose ideas keep me lively and whose wisdom keeps me calm, I'd still be writing in isolation.
Thanks also to The Karpfinger Agency's Cathy Jaque for careful scrutiny and recommendations, and to Marc Jaffee, who read it there first.

I am gleefully indebted to Amy Einhorn. Thank you for your encouragement, your galvanizing energy and your clarifying insights. Thanks also to Liz Stein for being such a cheerful guide through the process, and to everyone at Putnam for the professional excellence there.

Alison Jean Lester
was born in the United States, and has variously grown up, studied, worked, written, and raised her two children in the United States, the United Kingdom, China, Italy, Taiwan, Japan, and Singapore. She currently lives with her family in Singapore.

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