Bag of Bones AUTHOR’S NOTE

To an extent, this novel deals with the legal aspects of child grasp in the State of Maine. I asked for help in understanding this work from my friend Warren Silver, who is a fine attorney. Warren guided me carefully, and on the way he in any case t white-haired me about a quaint old device called the Stenomask, which I immediately appropriated for my own fell purposes. If Ive made adjectival mistakes in the story which follows, blame me, not my legal resource. Warren also asked merather plaintively if I could maybe put a good attorney in my book. All I can say is that I did my trump in that regard.Thanks to my son Owen for technical support in Woodstock, newfangled York, and to my friend (and fellow Rock Bottom Remainder) Ridley Pearson for technical support in Ketchum, Idaho. Thanks to Pam Dorman for her sympathetic and perceptive reading of the first draft. Thanks to regorge Verrill for a monumental editing jobyour personal best, Chuck. Thanks to Susan Moldow, nanna Grah am, Jack Roman s, and Carolyn Reidy at Scribner for care and feeding. And thanks to Tabby, who was there for me again when things got hard. I love you, hon.S.K.Yes, Bartleby, stay there behind your screen, thought II shall persecute you no more you are harmless andnoiseless as any of these old chairs in short, I never relishso private as when I know you are here.BartlebyHERMAN MELVILLE give-up the ghost night I dreamt I went to Manderley again . . .As I stood there, muffled and still, I could swear thatthe house was not an empty shell and lived and breathedas it had lived before.RebeccaDAPHNE DU MAURIER Mars is heaven.RAY BRADBURY