I owe a debt to The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, for teaching me firsthand about the tremendous complexity and history of L.A. art. The following books were instrumental in further research: Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thornton; It Happened at Pomona: Art at the Edge of Los Angeles 1969–1973 by Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer; Jack Goldstein and the CalArts Mafia and The Beat and the Buzz: Inside the L.A. Art World, both by Richard Hertz; and Creating the Future: Art and Los Angeles in the 1970s by Michael Fallon. The art documentary films The Cool School (director Morgan Neville) and The Price of Everything (director Nathaniel Kahn) were also illuminating. The study that Maggie Richter uncovers on campus rape and repeat offenders is a real study by David Lisak and Paul M. Miller; it can be found in Violence and Victims 17, no.1 (2002). The stories of assaults that Maggie read in the LAAC campus news are based on stories that victims related to me throughout my own undergraduate and graduate life.

A novel is a dream wishing its way toward completion without its first readers. Rita Mae Reese, Sara Houghteling, Elizabeth Fenton, Sarah Frisch, Miciah Bay Gault, Liz Powell, Angie Palm, and Mirra Schwartz, thank you for reading and helping me shape my early drafts. Thank you, Gail Hochman, my wise and ever-supportive agent, for asking all the right questions next.

To Dan Smetanka, my editor, thank you for always seeing the book inside the book, and for being its brilliant, generous, exacting champion.

To the Counterpoint-Catapult family—which is just large enough and dear enough to make me panic that I am forgetting someone—in my mind, you all won the Halloween contest. Thank you, Andy Hunter, for your pioneering energy and warm leadership; Megan Fishmann and Lena Moses-Schmitt, for your blazing publicity skills; Nicole Caputo, for your artistry; Dan López, for your many talents in the L.A. office; Rachel Fershleiser, in marketing; Wah-Ming Chang and Jordan Koluch in production; Janet Renard, for your eye; Katie Boland and Miyako Singer for the many details you arrange.

Thank you, Jaya Miceli, for your breathtaking covers. They teach me.

A huge thanks goes to Reese Witherspoon and Hello Sunshine for the deep impact you are making for women authors, as well as the passionate readers I’ve met through your book club. Thank you, Marianne Merola at Brandt & Hochman for bringing my books to audiences around the world. My gratitude also goes to my savvy TV/film agent, Mary Pender at UTA, and Temple Hill and NBC/Universal, especially Julie Waters, Adam Fishbach, and Jess Goldberg, for working to take this project to the screen.