Journal of a UFO Investigator (39 page)

At Viking, I've been blessed with two of the finest editors I can imagine. Kendra Harpster, who shepherded the manuscript from acquisition to production, persisted in asking exactly the right questions of the book and refused to be contented with any answer that did not move it toward becoming all it could be. Josh Kendall has taken it from there, bringing his panache and sound judgment to the book's benefit in a multitude of ways. Thanks also to Amanda Brower and Laura Tisdel, for their careful reads and penetrating suggestions, and to Maggie Riggs, Josh's tirelessly helpful assistant. And to Carolyn Coleburn, Gabrielle Gantz, Alex Gigante, Pearl Hanig, Daniel Lagin, and Jennifer Tait.

I thank novelist Philip Gerard, for a conversation more than six years ago which helped me see unrealized potential for the book. I thank reference librarian Barbara Harris of the Roswell (New Mexico) Public Library, who helped me research the history of the town and the air force base when I visited Roswell in September 2006; and the staff of the Free Library of Philadelphia, who helped me get the details of the library scenes just right. I thank writers Paul Cuadros, Alison Hill, Jake Horwitz, John Kessel, Duncan Murrell, James Protzman, John Reed, Howard Schwartz, Daniel Wallace, Allen Wold, and the late Professor Martin Lakin; readers Ayesha Coleman and Benjamin MacLeod; and our family friends Shirley Bullock, Gina Mahalek and Jackie Wilson, Steve Eubanks and Steve Mullinix, for help that they themselves know best. And I thank our “beloved community” of faith, the Eno River Unitarian Universalist Fellowship (ERUUF) of Durham, North Carolina, which has given Rose and me a place of worship and inspiration, amply fulfilling for us the promise of one of our favorite Unitarian Universalist hymns: