I want to sincerely thank the Canada Council for the Arts for giving me the time to sit in a room of my own.

I wrote much of this book trying not to stare out the window at the Carso that surrounds the United World College of the Adriatic in Duino, Italy. Thanks to the people we met in this otherworldly place, especially Annemarie Oomes and Filippo Scalandi.

Thanks to Maryam Sanati, Stephanie Hodnett, Kate Robson, and Andrea Curtis for editorial guidance and emotional endurance. True friend Celia Moore put me in touch with Dr. Asrar Rashid, who provided medical insight. Alisa Apostle, Alison McLean, and Mercedeh Sanati all submitted to my brain picking on law and finance when they had much better things to do.

Writing is a family pastime, whether the rest of the family likes it or not. My parents, Gary and Cindy Onstad, have always been supportive, but they also understand that a writer’s favorite phrase is: “We’ll take the kids.” Thank you both.

Those particular kids, Jude and Mimi, are the source of this story and all that’s meaningful. Thank you for your patience with the closed door.

And I thank my husband, Julian Bauld, who gave me the title, and the reason, and lives closer to art than anyone I know.

KATRINA ONSTAD’s first novel, How Happy to Be, was published to great acclaim. Her journalism has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, as well as in The Guardian and Elle. She is a Canadian National Magazine Award winner, and has been nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and an American National Magazine Award. She is a culture columnist for the Globe and Mail and lives in Toronto with her family.

Visit her at www.katrinaonstad.com.