The Identicals(120)
A third location in this novel—one more deeply explored in the extra chapter entitled “The Country Club,” about Billy Frost meeting Eleanor Roxie in 1967 (available in certain editions of this book)—is Beacon Hill in Boston. I spend six weeks each fall living on Beacon Hill, and I would like to thank the people who make it feel like home: Paul Kosak and Anouk van der Boor, Julie Girschek, Michael Farina, Nina Castellion of E. R. Butler, Tom Kershaw of the Hampshire House, my barre buddy Liz King, Jennifer Hill from Blackstone’s, and Rebecca, Laura, and Brie of Crush. (I revise… and I also do a fair amount of shopping.)
As I’ve told you countless times before, my editor, Reagan Arthur, is an actual genius. She runs the company, Little, Brown, that publishes me, and she still finds time to be the editor of my dreams and take nature photos for Instagram. My agents, Michael Carlisle and David Forrer, are devoted to the happiness and well-being of Elin Hilderbrand the novelist and of Elin Hilderbrand the person—for this, I could not love them more; they are the finest gentlemen in the business. Special kudos to my killer publicity team of Katharine Myers and Alyssa Persons, as well as other super important people at Hachette: Peggy Freudenthal, Terry Adams, Craig Young, Matt Carlini, Andy LeCount, and the legendary Michael Pietsch.
And then there’s my home team. I feel silly repeating the names year after year, but I can’t live, write, or smile without the following people: Rebecca Bartlett, Debbie Briggs, Wendy Hudson, Wendy Rouillard, Margie and Chuck Marino, Anne and Whitney Gifford, Richard Congdon, Elizabeth and Beau Almodobar, Evelyn and Matthew MacEachern, Heidi and Fred Holdgate, Norm and Jen Frazee, Jen and Steve Laredo, John and Martha Sargent, Dave and Laura Lombardi, Manda Riggs, David Rattner and Andrew Law, Shelly and Roy Weedon, Helaina Jones, MKF, the Timothy Fields, big and small, and Ginna, Paul, and Christian Kogler. Also, the entire staff of the Nantucket Hotel deserves mention because it is, without doubt, my home away from home, and large portions of this novel were written by the pool there.
Beth Boucher, you get your own few lines: I’ve had superlative nannies in the past (Za, AV, Steph, Sarah, Erin), but you took on a job more daunting than theirs because of the incendiary ages of my children last summer (sixteen, fourteen, ten). Who wants to keep track of a sixteen-year-old boy? Nobody! A fourteen-year-old boy? Absolutely nobody! Thank you, Beth. You kept them alive, you kept them content, you kept them engaged. They preferred you to me—which is, of course, the whole point of hiring a nanny.
Lu Machiavelli: You are a flower-box maven! I don’t even know what those flowers are in Eleanor’s windows, but they sound outrageous!
Finally to my children, Maxwell, Dawson, and Shelby: This is both a thank-you and an apology. Writing two novels a year requires discipline and solitude, neither of which is optimal for parenting three busy kids. This past year there were balls dropped, games missed, tempers lost, and meals repeated week after week (as Dawson likes to say, You always make the same three things!). But please know that with every word I write, I honor the three of you as well as the incredibly beautiful island on which you are growing up. I am lucky for so many reasons—but mostly I am lucky to have three smart, talented, healthy, and thriving children like you.