The Edge of Everything (Untitled #1)(100)

Thank you to the loyal friends who’ve always been there for me: Jill Bernstein, Meeta Agrawal, Kristen Baldwin, Sara Boilen, Sabrina Calley, Veronica Chambers, Betsy Gleick, Devin Gordon, Barrie Gruner, Chris Heath, Carrie Levy, Rick Porras, Brian & Lyndsay Schott, Lou Vogel, and my fellow YA authors in the Sweet Sixteens and the Swanky Seventeens. A special hat-tip to Karen Valby, who suggested the name Zoe for my main character back when other people were insisting that I name her after them. (A note from my friend Kate Ward: “I would settle for the villain.”)

I’m indebted to two gripping articles: Peter Stark’s examination of what it feels like to freeze to death (Outside magazine) and Ray Kershaw’s account of the Mossdale caving tragedy (The Independent).

My family and I moved to Montana in 2014 to be closer to my father-in-law, Dick Bevill. This book was written largely at a thrift-store desk overlooking Dick’s ranch, and it is, I hope, animated with a bit of his own questing spirit and his reverence for the natural world.

Thanks also to my intrepid brother-in-law, James Peterson, who went caving with me so I wouldn’t wuss out, and my nephew, Max McFarland, who coined the term “Struggle Buggy,” which I have borrowed for Zoe’s Taurus. Max uses it to describe his friend Nick’s junky Toyota Corolla, which resembles a car only insofar as it is car-shaped and has tires.

Finally, I would like to thank my awesome, weird-in-a-good-way children, Lily and Theo, and my sister, Susan Heger, who is the most openhearted person I’ve ever known.