Ashes (31 page)

I must also thank Nadine Lowry. Although Nadine is just fifteen years old, she became my source for translating various German words and expressions that might touch upon the lives of schoolgirls today in Germany. She also described to me certain German Christmas traditions. Nadine is well on her way to fluency in several languages, and I wish her all the best.

Through this entire process my editor, Joy Peskin, although in New York, has been at my side. I cannot express my appreciation first of all for her unbridled enthusiasm for this book from the very start and her wonderful insights that guided me through many revisions and steered me with a light touch around many pitfalls, quagmires, and any other of the words that one can think of for disastrous obstacles and traps that a writer might encounter!

Ashes
covers one of the most documented periods in all of history. For Janet Pascal, the production editor, checking the facts of this story for accuracy was a monumental task. With good humor and one of the keenest eyes in the business she slogged her way through this manuscript, finding everything from outright errors to subtle nuances that possibly undercut the authenticity I strived to achieve.

Finally I must give deepest thanks to the Rockefeller Foundation for providing me with an undisturbed month at the Bellagio Study and Conference Center at the Villa Serbelloni through their Creative Arts Residency Program. As much as the quiet and beauty of this special place was appreciated, so was the wonderful and stimulating company of the other visiting scholars and artists who ranged from a composer to a young Filipino poet to an American and a Russian novelist, an African soil scientist, an economist, and a legal scholar. In particular I would like to thank the incomparable director of the Bellagio Program, Pilar Palacio, who made everything so darned easy!

 

 

Kathryn Lasky
Cambridge, Massachusetts
2010