Thank you to Nicole Cash, who I interviewed about her work as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker. Her insights into working with children were invaluable as I wrote Opa’s scenes with Cami.

Thank you to Damon Rich, urban planner, designer, and artist, who talked with me about cities and the history of cities when I was designing this strange microcosm of a town.

Thank you to tarot reader Jenna Matlin, who let me record a session where I took on the persona of Izabel. I had no idea what would happen in that session and it guided Izabel’s path in so many ways.

Thank you to PennFuture, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, and Willamette Week. I wanted to capture how our communal recent past works in this singular near future, and I couldn’t have done it without your words.

Thank you to Green Engine and all of their wonderful staff. I wrote this book there, often looking at the beautiful wall of plants that could never exist in Clean Air!

Many, many friends read this book and supported me through writing and revising it. Thank you Eleanor Stanford, Lynne Beckenstein, Linda Gallant, Rachel Mennies, Maximiliano Schell, Carla Bruce-Eddings, Sarah Lyn Rogers, Rosser Lomax, Natalie Shapero, Sarah Einstein, Nicky Arscott, Dawn Lonsinger, Mariel Capanna, Nadine Darling, Tracey Levine, Tyler Goldman, Rebecca Fortes, Julie Langsdorf, Sara Curran, Vikram Paralkar, Amy Jo Burns, Kristen McGuiness, Hetal Kapadia, Hunter McLendon, and Catie Rosemurgy.

Thank you always to my agent, Sarah Yake.

Thank you to my editor, Abby Muller, and to everyone at Algonquin Books.

Thank you to my family. To my son, Aaron, first and forever. To Cris, Nick, Vic, Bian, Kiet, Noah, Sandy, Bob, Maya, Michael, Adam, Ian. And to my mother, Barbara, who died in 2019, but who read and loved this book just as it was, and I’m so glad that I keep finding more people who love it as she did.

Also by Sarah Blake

ALSO BY SARAH BLAKE

Fiction
Naamah

Poetry
Let’s Not Live on Earth
Mr. West

About the Author

Sarah Blake

Sarah Blake’s novel Naamah won the National Jewish Book Award for Debut Fiction. Blake is also the author of the poetry collections Mr. West and Let’s Not Live on Earth. In 2013, she was awarded a literature fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She currently lives in the UK.