One more Edentonian I’d like to acknowledge is Elizabeth Berry of the Garden of Readin’ Bookstore and Tea Room. Thank you for helping me with my first Edenton book event, Elizabeth, and I hope we get to work together again. Elizabeth also makes a great cup of tea!

Probably most overwhelming to me as I did my research for this book was my need to learn about mural restoration. Jan Hessling of Hessling Conservation LLC in Durham, North Carolina spent hours with me, illustrating the tools and techniques of her trade. Thank you, Jan, for the time you took to give me so much information about your work—and the work Morgan would have to do on the mural. You were an amazing resource.

I’m also grateful to my stepdaughter, Brittany Walls, an artist by training, for helping me understand some of the artistic elements that went into Anna’s painting and Morgan’s restoration.

Speaking of Morgan, I needed to learn about her crime, her punishment, and her parole. Former probation officer Jason Dzierzynski was a wonderful resource for me, as was an old high school friend who prefers to remain nameless. Thank you both for taking the time to answer my many questions and for helping me make Morgan’s crime and punishment realistic and believable.

I’m grateful to my assistant Kathy Williamson for whom no task is too challenging, and my sister Joann Scanlon for reading an early draft of Big Lies in a Small Town and offering helpful feedback.

Thank you to my North Carolina writing friends, those women who understand the joy, creativity, self doubt, and just plain hard work that goes into writing a novel. Special thanks to Mary Kay Andrews. We spent a week together in her beautiful Tybee Island home, writing and researching and brainstorming our works in progress. Thank you, Mary Kay, for sharing your home, your friendship, and your ever-inventive brain with me.

I’m convinced I have the best agent in the world in Susan Ginsburg. Susan is perceptive, talented, and kind, but ferocious when she needs to be on behalf of her clients. I’m so lucky to have her in my corner. Thanks also to the rest of the staff at Writers House for their hard work on behalf of my books, especially Catherine Bradshaw and Peggy Boulos Smith and those folks who work behind the scene to get my books into the hands of my readers. Thanks, too, Lucy Stille at the Agency for Performing Arts.

Jen Enderlin, my ever-perceptive editor, can read a manuscript and immediately see how it can be improved. Authors get so close to their work that it’s sometimes impossible for them to see the imperfections. I’ve learned to trust and respect Jen’s editorial superpowers and I’m grateful that I get to work with her.