The Dead Lands

Acknowledgments

Thanks to my agent, Katherine Fausset, for her wisdom and friendship and muscle and savvy. Thanks, too, to the rest of the gang at Curtis Brown, especially Holly Frederick.

I am eternally grateful to Helen Atsma at Grand Central and Oliver Johnson at Hodder. Due to their editorial vision and encouragement, this novel transformed dramatically from first to final draft. Thank you for riding into battle with me again.

Thanks to Sonya Cheuse, the best publicist in the biz, and everyone else at Hachette (in the US and UK) who make publishing a book so much fun: Brian McLendon, Allyson Rudolph, Jamie Raab, Marissa Sangiacomo, Kerry Hood, Anne Perry.

A short section of this novel originally appeared in Ploughshares—thanks for the showcase.

Thanks to William Souder, Dan Hernandez, Jeremy Solin, for their help with environmental research. And I’m indebted to books like Alan Weisman’s The World Without Us for helping me understand the science of the apocalypse. The Kingkiller Chronicle series by Patrick Rothfuss made me fall in love with fantasy again, and I owe him a debt of gratitude for that and for his intricate magic systems, which influenced my own clumsy attempts at spellbinding.

And finally, thanks to my wife for her unending love and patience and good-heartedness and support.