I am grateful to Kate Wode-house at the Providence Athenaeum and to Mary Warnement at the Boston Athenaeum, for their assistance with research for this book; to Zoe Pagnamenta, for her early reading; to Marie Salter of the copyediting department at Little, Brown and Company; to Pat Gentle, for the gift of Sifnos; and to Mara Samellas Taylor and her brothers, John and Demi Samellas, for their generosity in Athens. I would also like to thank Mary and Sam Parkman, Stephen A. Mahoney, Pat Towers, John and Nancy Mahoney, Betsey Osborne, John Barnett and Isolde Maher, Vanessa Hartmann, Marcia Whitaker, A. Thomas Cole, Melina Papageorgiou, Louly Seif, Elaina Richardson and the Corporation of Yaddo, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Nikolaos Ieronymakis.
I am very much indebted to Betsy Lerner, my agent, for her tireless help with this project, and to my editor, Pat Strachan, for her support, skill, good humor, and grace.