A Harvest of Secrets(77)

Paolo waited a few more seconds to be sure; then he turned and hurried toward the flower garden to give his daughter the wonderful news.





ACKNOWLEDGMENTS


I have, as always, a number of people to thank: my wife, Amanda, and our daughters, Alexandra and Juliana, first of all, for their steady love, support, and wisdom. I’d like to express my gratitude to Peter Grudin and Robert Braile—two close friends who are also superb writers and editors. They took many hours out of their lives to go carefully through the manuscript of this novel and offer suggestions and corrections. I’m grateful to another friend, Peter Sarno, for his consistent support of my work through the newsletter and Plus Side essays and the publication of many of my earlier books. My heartfelt thanks, also, to two superb editors, Chris Werner and David Downing. Their careful readings and our detailed back-and-forth inspired good ideas, saved me from serious missteps, and undoubtedly made the book better. My appreciation, also, to Max de Zarobe, who, with his wife, Virginie, owns a magnificent vineyard, Avignonesi, in a part of Italy very close to the place where this story is set. I’d already chosen that location when I discovered Max, so the hand of fate may have been involved, but I’m grateful to him for a good deal of the factual information about winemaking at that time, and in that part of Italy, and for an incredible tour of the vineyard and a remarkable lunch there. In his case, and in the case of Simone Gugliotta, who helped me with the fine points of the Italian language, any errors that appear in these pages are entirely my own. I’m grateful, as always, to my superb agent, Margaret Sutherland Brown, at Folio Literary. Final thanks to the good people at Lake Union who worked on the production and copyediting of the manuscript, especially Nicole Burns-Ascue and Sarah Engel.