The Daughters: A Novel (31 page)

Authors: Adrienne Celt

BOOK: The Daughters: A Novel

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To Katie Henderson Adams, an editor whose value and charm cannot be overstated. Your careful insight and infectious enthusiasm made this a much better book, and I cannot thank you enough. Much gratitude to everyone at Liveright, especially Cordelia Calvert, Will Menaker, and Peter Miller.

To Emma Patterson, a true friend as well as a wonderful
agent. You have been a delight from the very beginning, and I look forward to working (and emailing) together for many years to come. Thank you for being my work’s greatest advocate—even to me, sometimes. Thanks also to Sarah Cornwell for bringing us together.

To my coworkers at Google, for their unflagging support—

To the Ragdale Foundation and the Willapa Bay AiR, for providing time, space, friendship, and sustenance (of every variety)—

To the Jewish Studies Department and the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University, for awarding me fellowships that allowed me travel to Krakow, Warsaw, Singapore, and Montreal in pursuit of this book—

To Caitlin Horrocks, Kevin McIlvoy, Antonya Nelson, and Andrea Barrett, for their generous readings and advice—

To Kara Hitchko and Lucia Ballard, for the use of their names, and for their friendship—

To the friends whose emails and phone calls I doubtless neglected while working on this book—

To my family, for believing in me and loving me always—

Thank you.

And finally, thanks could never be enough for Dave Clark, who not only loves me but also knows when to be close and when to give space—which is an invaluable gift. You are pretty great, sir.

The Daughters
is a novel. All of the characters are products of the author’s imagination, and all of the settings, locales, and events have been invented by the author or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, or to real persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Vasko Popa, “Last News About the Little Box,” translated by Charles Simic, from
Homage to the Lame Wolf: Selected Poems
. Copyright © 1987 by Oberlin College. Reprinted with the permission of Oberlin College Press.

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact W. W. Norton Special Sales at [email protected] or 800-233-4830

Book design by Abbate Design Production manager: Anna Oler

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Celt, Adrienne.

The daughters : a novel / Adrienne Celt.

pages cm

ISBN 978-1-63149-045-3 (hardcover)

1. Sopranos—Fiction. 2. Mothers and daughters—Fiction. 3. Grandmothers—Fiction. 4. Family life—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3603.E465D48 2015

813'.6—dc23

2015005829

ISBN 978-1-63149-046-0 (e-book)