Bill Gunlocke for being in my corner for more years than I care to mention.

Martin Moore of Brooklyn Friends School for lending me Latin textbooks when I really needed them.

Kavita Torres, my daughter’s caregiver, and the staff and faculty of Brooklyn Friends, my son’s school, for taking good care of my kids.

My mother and father, Joan and Robert Southgate, for inspiration; my sister, Teci Baldwin, for being the best salesperson a girl ever had; and my brothers, Robert and Daniel Southgate, for their love.

My husband, Jeff Phillips, and my children, Nate and Ruby Phillips, for filling my life with joy, laughter, and the occasional Pokémon.

And last, but not least, my friend Joe Wood, Jr., to whom this book is dedicated. Joe, a gifted writer and editor, disappeared while birding on Mt. Rainier in 1999. The mysteriousness of his passing makes it difficult to admit that he’s truly gone. He was my son’s godfather, he helped me in the early stages of this book, and he was like a brother to me for fourteen years. I miss him still and always.

The following books were extremely helpful in shaping this novel: Boys Themselves by Michael Ruhlman; A Hope in the Unseen by Ron Suskind (the scene in which Rashid insists on wearing flip-flops in the shower was inspired by an incident in this book); Finding their Stride by Sally Pont; and The Future of the Race by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Cornel West. The Latin translations were taken primarily from The Anchor Book of Latin Quotations, compiled by Norbert Guterman.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Martha Southgate was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. She is the author of the award-winning novel Another Way to Dance and has written for many publications, among them The New York Times Magazine, Essence, Premiere, Redbook, and The Village Voice. She is a graduate of Smith College and the MFA program at Goddard College. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband and two children.