Many thanks are due as well to those who read drafts of the novel, particularly Nadine Attewell, who generously shared her research on Percy Davis Chang, a mixed-race Black and Chinese radio worker in pre-war Hong Kong who was a major figure along the escape route for many refugees and internment camp escapees during the occupation. Having read about his life and work in Anthony Hewitt’s Bridge with Three Men: Across China to the Western Heaven in 1942 (Jonathan Cape, 1986) and seen his photo on gwulo.com, I was already excited about him. But Nadine showed me a fragment of a letter written by Chang to the British government, trying to get passage from Hong Kong to Jamaica, that she’d found in the Lindsay Tasman Ride Collection at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. The British had offered passage home to all those who assisted the Allies during the war. In light of the fact that Chang died of tuberculosis in Hong Kong shortly after the war, leaving a large family to make their way without him, I found this letter unbearably moving. His story provides the inspiration for the character Isadore Davis Wong, though Wong is not Chang. Gratitude to Nadine as well for her thoughtful and encouraging feedback on the novel’s first draft.

I relied once again on the brilliant and generous Warren Cariou, this time for his understanding of Métis history and culture, the particular experiences of Métis residential school survivors, and his knowledge of the city of Winnipeg and of vintage cameras. Without him, the character of William Courchene would not be who he is, and Violet’s photography hobby would be a bit of a mess too. Warren also helped me think through the history of Cree code talking in the Canadian army and how it might have had echoes among the Winnipeg Grenadiers in Hong Kong, where it was not officially practised, at least not in any documented way. (Cree code talking was employed in the European theatres; in Asia, the Americans engaged Navajo speakers to encode their communications. See the film Windtalkers starring Adam Beach and directed by John Woo to learn more about the Navajo code talkers.)

Gratitude to Lillian Allen for helping me develop the letters between Chang and Horace, for thinking through with me the po-ethics of writing them, and for her wonderful ear for both poetry and dialogue. Through conversation with her, the novel grew in important and necessary ways.

As a team, Monika Kin Gagnon and Scott Toguri McFarlane gave me wonderful feedback on the flow of the narrative and on the ethics of Japanese and Japanese Canadian representations. I’m especially grateful to Monika for helping me round out the novel’s women characters and to Scott for his thoughts on Raymond, the boy who disappears.

My friend and former graduate student Rebecca Geleyn gave me excellent feedback on character, structure, and flow. She’s a wonderful reader, and I’m truly appreciative.