The Girl in the Maze (28 page)

For my parents

The author would like to thank his creative writing mentors, Barbara Lebow and Frank Wittow, for their inspiration and example; his wife, Elizabeth St. Andre, for reintroducing him to the Sea Islands; his first-draft editor, Marcia Meier, for her valuable feedback and advice; his agent, Jennifer DeChiara, for her unwavering support; Barbara St. Andre, for her legal counsel; Amanda Barnett, for her advice about psychotherapy; and Judith Defrain, late proprietor of Eye of the Cat, for her advice on the ancient art of bone-throwing.

He is grateful to the fine team at Random House/Alibi, especially his editor, Dana Isaacson.

Thanks also to the readers of messy early drafts and excerpts from this book: Laura Butler, Richard Casey, Leslie Claire, Vickie Elliott, Maitreya Friedman, Ann Hennessey, Susan Marschner, Dan McNeill, Laura Otis, Alexes Razevich, Elizabeth St. Andre, Leslie Stuart, Julie Sullivan, and Megan Xuemei.

Acknowledgment also to
Drums and Shadows,
an account of oral folklore collected by the Georgia Writers' Project and published in 1940, which was a source of inspiration and helped inform some of the dialect and customs of the Geechees portrayed in this novel.

PHOTO: ELIZABETH ST. ANDRE

R. K. J
ACKSON
is a former CNN journalist who now works at Pasadena, California's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He lives with his family in the Los Padres National Forest and is at work on a second Martha Covington novel,
The Kiss of the Sun
.

randalkjackson.com

Facebook.com/​rkjacksonAuthor

@JacksonJPL

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