Sisters of Heart and Snow (39 page)

Novel writing, while a solitary practice, requires a veritable behind-the-scenes legion, providing logistical and moral support. Thank you to my supportive editor, Christine Pepe, and to Ivan Held for believing in me—and huge thanks to everyone at Putnam: Meaghan Wagner, Ashley Hewlett, Kate Stark, Lydia Hirt, Mary Stone, Anna Romig, Christopher Nelson, Amanda Dewey, and the rest of the team.

Many thanks go to my agent, Dan Lazar, and to Victoria Doherty-Monroe, Genevieve Gagne-Hawes, and the rest of the Writers House crew. To Julie Kibler, thank you for the moral and reading support beyond the call of duty. Appreciation goes out to the rest of our Oregon Women's Writing Retreat, where I wrote some of the first draft and whose members provide ongoing support: Marilyn Brant, Sarah Callender, Sarah McCoy, Jael McHenry, Kristina McMorris, Erika Robuck, and Therese Walsh. To my writer friends Jean Kwok, Susan Meissner, Patricia Wood, Jamie Ford, Ben Brooks, Kristan Hoffman, thanks for your sympathetic ears and advice. Thanks to my assistant, Frankie Masi, for freeing me to write. Tracie Masi, Brenda Radder, Jennifer Kurpiewski, Carly Garrett—you all helped in ways you probably don't even know about. Thanks to The Naked and Famous, The Airborne Toxic Event, and Tokyo Police Club for providing my writing sound track.

Randy Schadel, scholar at the Samurai Archives website, and his wife, Dr. Ayame Chiba, read an early draft of the historical portion and offered suggestions and corrections for many things great and small, like the fact that green tea was had only by nobles and monks during Tomoe's time. Any errors in this book are mine.

Finally, I want to thank my husband, Keith, who reread each scene twenty times without complaining once and bought me all the chocolate I wanted; and our children, who tolerated countless microwaved dinners with cheerful understanding. You mean everything.

People often ask me which parts of my books are “true” and which are “made up.” My answer to this question is this quotation from Maya Angelou: “Facts can obscure the truth, what it really felt like.” I'm more concerned about the emotional truth that my characters experience.

That said, I've tried to keep the historical details as accurate as possible, except where keeping historical data intact would disturb the story—that “truth” I tried to pursue. So some facts have been purposely fudged. For example, Yoshinaka had another concubine, named Aoi, whom I left out purposely (though I gave her a nod by naming another character after her). Other historical members of the Minamoto clan have been omitted for the sake of simplicity.

I anticipate some readers will discover historical inaccuracies that they may be tempted to write to me about. However, please remember this is a work of fiction, not a history book. If you find my liberties disturbing, I invite you to write your own book.

If you're interested in reading more about the samurai era, check out the e-book companion piece,
Tale of the Warrior Geisha
, the full book-within-a-book, which expands on Tomoe and Yamabuki's stories.

To read more about samurai, Japan, and the mail-order-bride industry, look into some of these sources:

Chun, Christine. S. Y. “The Mail-Order Bride Industry: The Perpetuation of Transnational Economic Inequalities and Stereotypes.”
University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law
17, no. 4 (1996), pp. 1155–1208.

Englander, Itta C. “The Search for June Cleaver: International Marriage Brokerages and Mail-Order Brides.” 2008. Available at: http://works.bepress.com/itta_englander/1.

Farris, William Wayne.
Japan's Medieval Population: Famine, Fertility, and Warfare in a Transformative Age.
Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2006.

Joly, Henri L.
Legend in Japanese Art: A Description of Historical Episodes, Legendary Characters, Folk-lore, Myths, Religious Symbolism, Illustrated in the Arts of Old Japan
. London: John Lane, 1908. See especially p. 374.

Ruch, Barbara. “Unheeded Voices, Winked-at Lives: Shamans.” In Kozo Yamamura and John Whitney Hall, eds.,
The Cambridge History of Japan
, vol. 3,
Medieval Japan
, pp. 521–540. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

The Samurai Archives. “Minamoto Clan.” http://wiki.samurai-archives.com/index.php?title=Minamoto_clan. Consulted October 2013.

Shikibu, Murasaki.
The Tale of Genji
(1021). Translated by Royall Tyler. New York: Viking, 2001.

The Tale of the Heike
.
Translated by Royall Tyler. New York: Viking, 2012.

The Tales of the Heike
. Translated by Burton Watson. Edited by Haruo Shirane. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006.

Turnbull, Stephen
. The Book of the Samurai, the Warrior Class of Japan.
New York: Arco, 1982.

_______.
The Samurai Sourcebook.
London: Arms and Armour Press, 1998.

_______.
The Samurai Swordsman: Master of War.
North Clarendon, VT: Charles E. Tuttle, 2008.

_______.
Samurai Women, 1184–1877.
Oxford and Long Island City: Osprey, 2010.

Villalpando, Venny. “The Business of Selling Mail-Order Brides.” In Michelle Plott and Laurie Umansky, eds.,
Making Sense of Women's Lives: An Introduction to Women's Studies
, pp. 178–184. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000.

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