Mame Lambeth, my dearest and oldest friend, read all my books multiple times at different stages. I turned to her because she was brilliant and creative, but mostly because she loved me, and I trusted her more than anyone else in the world. She read a rough draft of this novel before she passed away on June 12, 2018, the night after her seventy-fifth birthday. I spent the next several months revising this manuscript with the profound grief of losing the person who had been my only anchor in life spanning the past thirty-two years. In both of my previous novels, I inserted tributes to her that only she would recognize. Her daughter Erin Caldwell, my former high school classmate, recognizes them too. Mame taught me many things, among which was how to live my truth even (and especially) when it was at odds with social conventions. She showed me how to love and appreciate solitude, how to connect with the natural world and forge emotional relationships with animals. She didn’t like many people and let very few into her life. It was my privilege to be loved by her. She never let me down, never disappointed me, though I’m sure I let her down and disappointed her plenty. This novel is dedicated to her memory, and as with my previous novels, there are bits written for her. I am glad that I was able to tell her how much I loved her and what her enduring and unwavering friendship meant to me over the years since we first met, when I was a lost and troubled sixteen-year-old high school student. But I am still left feeling that I did not do or say enough. She gave me far more than I gave her. Dedicating this novel to her memory is only fitting, however insufficient or late it might be. My life is dimmer without her. I still have not adjusted to the reality that our daily online Scrabble games are no more; or that I cannot pick up the phone to call her whenever I want, to ask about her garden, her dogs, her shoulder problems, her kids and grandkids; or to tell her about my days, to gossip, complain, rejoice, and generally indulge in the most profound friendship I’ve ever known.

Then, just as the galleys were printed, I learned that my birth mother, Aminah Abulhawa, was critically ill. We spoke for the first time in ten years. She was in a hospital bed unable to breathe well, but we saw each other on FaceTime, and her eyes smiled behind the oxygen mask when I told her I was coming to Kuwait to see her. By the time my plane landed a couple of days later, she was already in the ICU, heavily sedated, unaware of my presence or of her body’s struggle to hold on.