Things Too Huge to Fix by Saying Sorry (33 page)

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F
ICTION

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This book has been quite the journey for me. It touches many places I have wanted to write about, and gives voice to growing up as a child in Mississippi during a dark and yet explosively amazing period of change.

I appreciate encouragement along the way from many friends who have been willing to discuss, debate, and help me find the words. Thank you to Christine Taylor-Butler, Markeeta Wilkerson, and Jennifer Fritz for listening to me babble and struggle and try to put this into perspective. I really appreciate my agent, Erin Murphy, who kept saying, “You know, all this stuff you talk about from when you were little, don't you want to write about it yet?” And it has been wonderful to have an editor who didn't cover her head and scream, “No!” when I dove into this tale with all of its wild complexities. Sylvie Frank is brave and supportive, and most important, willing to listen, and able to help me listen when I forget to do so.

My stepmother, Bonnie Vaught, went intrepidly into the new Oxford (very different from the Oxford of my childhood and college years) and helped me with some locations and descriptions. My cousin, Camille Mitchell, hunted down restaurant info. A very sweet lady at the University of Mississippi, whose name I do not know, but who sits in front of the door to the Ventress Hall turret, answered my telephone questions with kindness and patience, and she never even laughed at me. And, as always, my family put up with me going silent and putting on headphones and playing the
same music over and over for months as I wrote, rewrote, then tried again one more time. A book is never a solo effort. Many people contribute, whether they know it or not, and whether or not I remember to say THANK YOU.

So, um, THANK YOU. To all of you, and to anyone I might have forgotten, and always, always, to the readers. You get the biggest THANK YOU of all!

A
LSO BY
S
USAN
V
AUGHT

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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Text copyright © 2016 by Susan Vaught

Jacket illustration copyright © 2016 by Jim Tierney

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The text for this book is set in New Caledonia.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Vaught, Susan, 1965– author.

Title: Things too huge to fix by saying sorry / Susan Vaught.

Description: First edition. | New York : Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, [2016] | “A Paula Wiseman Book.” | Summary: “A family mystery leads Dani Beans to investigate the secrets of Ole Miss and the dark history of race relations in Oxford, Mississippi”—Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015025579| ISBN 9781481422796 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781481422819 (eBook)

Subjects: | CYAC: Families—Fiction. | Vendetta—Fiction. | Race Relations—Fiction. | Civil rights movements—Fiction. | Oxford (Miss.)—History—20th century—Fiction. | Oxford (Miss.)—Fiction.

Classification: LCC PZ7.V4673 Go 2016 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

LC record available at
http://lccn.loc.gov/2015025579