Acknowledgments

Many thanks to close friends, pep talkers, faith keepers, cheerleaders, and early readers: Alice Hoffman, Ann Leary, Julie Klam, Jillian Medoff, Wendy Law-Yone, Paul Fedorko, Beth Teitell, Hilary Ilick, Pamela Painter, Janet Dale, Gesine Bullock-Prado, Katie Rosman, Lori Galvin, Lynn Bikofsky, Brendan Dealy, Ben Dealy, Erin Braddock Pearson, Kimberly Mikesh, Barbara Hall Gordon, Ashley Van Buren, Lisa Takeuchi Cullen, Reagan Arthur, Sandy Pool, Marianne Szegedy-Maszak, Julie Grau, Sue Miller, Joan Wickersham, Zoe Anderson, Donna Apostol Heimlich, Bill Mueller, Laura Rossi, and Rory Evans. I could not have done this again after so long without so much support.

Nor could I have done it without the gift of time and space. Huge thanks to friends who gave me keys to their beautiful and peaceful empty houses and apartments to use as writing retreats: Elisa D’Andrea and Glen Weinstein, Judy and John Bright, Sue Miller and Doug Bauer, and Jennifer Weiner. Thanks also to the Corporation of Yaddo where part of this novel was written.

Extra special thanks to Ivan Held for remaining “undaunted” (his word) and leading me to Stephanie Kipp Rostan at Levine Greenberg Rostan, who then led me to Megan Lynch at Ecco, and to Jill Gillet at WME—who all took a chance on me after so many dormant years. A dream well worth waiting for. Thanks to Ecco’s stellar publishing team, including Dan Halpern, Miriam Parker, Sara Birmingham, Meghan Deans, Dale Rohrbaugh, Allison Saltzman, Sonya Cheuse, Rachel Kaplan, Ashlyn Edwards, Shelly Perron, and to Anne Bentley for a fabulous cover illustration. And to Sarah Bedingfield, Elizabeth Fisher, Melissa Rowland, Mick Coccia, and Cristela Henriquez at LGR for all their hard work on my behalf.

My parents didn’t live long enough to see it, but they would have loved nothing more than this second chance.

An Excerpt from Small World

Read on for a sneak peek at Laura Zigman’s page-turning novel

SMALL WORLD

Coming soon in hardcover from Ecco

Untitled Prologue

There’s a photo, an old snapshot—black-and-white, with the date going up the border in typewriter font—1969. Women in Peter Pan–collared blouses and teased hair and men with white shirts and skinny ties, straight from work, are in the living room, smiling at the camera from behind their cigarettes. Your mother is in the center, holding Eleanor in her lap. She’s smiling, and so is Eleanor, but Eleanor always looks like she’s smiling. Born with cerebral palsy, complicated by a severe seizure disorder, she doesn’t walk or talk, her head tilts back, and her mouth hangs open as if she’s hungry for air. Back then the blanket term for children born like Eleanor was retarded—and that’s what you and Lydia say when you’re asked about your family. We have a sister who’s retarded. Later, when you’re asked where she lives during that one year she doesn’t live at home anymore, you’ll say: At Fernald. Which is short for the Walter E. Fernald State School, once known as the Massachusetts School for the Feeble-Minded, the institution outside Boston where the children of the people in the picture live, too.