Thanks to my family—including my brother, Harry, and his wife, Marie Domingo. My lovely in-laws—Mary Harvey and the late Simon Harvey; the late James Harvey; Simon, Catherine, Charlie, and Henrietta Burchell; Nicholas, Marie-Ange, Elfreda, and Oscar Harvey—resemble no fictional in-laws contained in this book.

Gus and Matilda Harvey are the children I would have invented for myself if my imagination were good enough.

To Edward Carey I owe debts, both literary and otherwise, that I have never successfully put into words.

“Proof,” “Mistress Mickle All at Sea,” “A Walk-Through Human Heart,” “Birdsong from the Radio,” “Nothing, Darling, Only Darling, Darling,” and “It’s Not You” were originally published in Zoetrope All-Story (with many thanks, as always, to Michael Ray). “Mistress Mickle All at Sea” and “It’s Not You” were published in The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses, edited by Bill Henderson. “It’s Not You” was published in Best American Short Stories 2020 (with thanks to Curtis Sittenfeld and Heidi Pitlor). “Birdsong from the Radio” was written for the anthology xo Orpheus: Fifty New Myths, edited by Kate Bernheimer; it was reprinted in The O. Henry Prize Stories 2015, with thanks to Marissa Colón Margolies, Taylor Flory Ogletree, and Laura Furman. “Robinson Crusoe at the Waterpark” was originally published in Reader, I Married Him: Stories Inspired by Jane Eyre, edited by Tracy Chevalier. “Two Sad Clowns” was originally published in O: The Oprah Magazine. “The Get-Go” was originally published in American Short Fiction. “The Irish Wedding” was originally published in the Atlantic. “The Souvenir Museum” was originally published in Harper’s Magazine.

About the Author

ELIZABETH MCCRACKEN is the author of six previous works—Bowlaway, Here’s Your Hat What’s Your Hurry, The Giant’s House (a National Book Award finalist), Niagara Falls All Over Again, the memoir An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination, and Thunderstruck & Other Stories (winner of the 2014 Story Prize and long-listed for the National Book Award)—three of which were New York Times Notable Books. She has received grants and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. She has served on the faculty at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and currently holds the James Michener Chair in Fiction at the University of Texas at Austin.

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Also by Elizabeth McCracken

Here’s Your Hat What’s Your Hurry

The Giant’s House

Niagara Falls All Over Again

An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination

Thunderstruck and Other Stories

Bowlaway

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