Prophet of Bones

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

No book is an island. This one in particular owes an immense debt of gratitude to a great many people. I’d like to thank the many biologists, archaeologists, geneticists, and anthropologists throughout the years whose combined body of knowledge I have been the fortunate recipient of. Without their scientific efforts, this novel could never have been written. I’d like to thank the scientific thinkers John Hawks, Razib Khan, Carl Zimmer, Dienekes Pontikos, and Blaine T. Bettinger, whose blogs are amazing repositories for cutting-edge thought in the fields of genetics and anthropology. This book would have looked very different without their influence. I’d like to especially thank the archaeological dig team who did the real work on the Flores fossils. I’ve never met you—and nothing about this book was meant to intersect in any way with anyone associated with the real find—but without the discoveries made in Flores this work of fiction would have lacked a factual foundation to build upon. You have my respect and gratitude. If at any point in the novel I got the science wrong, it is nobody’s fault but my own.

I’d like to thank my writer friends Jack Skillingstead, Michael Poore, Nancy Kress, and Marc Laidlaw for hanging out with me and talking shop during the time I was writing the novel. I’d like to thank Patrick Swenson and the Rainforest Writers’ Village for giving me a quiet place by the water where I could finish the book. I’ll be back. I’d like to thank the entire Seattle-area writer community for being so open and supportive toward a new member of the kindred.

I’d also like to thank Aaron Schlechter, my editor, who believed in this novel and took a risk on it. And, of course, my agent Seth Fishman, and the Gernert Company, who got the book into the right hands and made the sale possible. I’d like to thank my parents again, in this book, too, because you can never thank your parents enough. I’d like to thank Jonathan Long for the great discussions on science and religion back when we were lab partners. I’d like to thank St. Patrick’s Elementary School and the old church where I was an altar boy. I have fond memories of those days. And Bob I’d like to thank for walking the ice all those years ago. You did fall through. And you pulled yourself out.