Dear Edward: A Novel (29 page)

For Dan Wilde, for everything

One of the biggest surprises, and joys, of parenthood has been observing the profound, generous love between my sons. The two brothers in this novel are not similar to my boys, but the love between them is entirely inspired by the relationship between my children. Thank you, Malachy and Hendrix, for showing me more shades of love than I knew existed.

There were two actual plane crashes that inspired this novel. The first was the 2010 crash of Afriqiyah Airways Flight 771, which had only one survivor, a nine-year-old Dutch boy. It was my worry about that little boy’s path out of tragedy that compelled me to find a way forward for Edward. The second was the crash of Air France Flight 447, about which I found Jeff Wise’s 2011
Popular Mechanics
article entitled “What Really Happened Aboard Air France 447” to be invaluable. I could not have written the details of the scenes in the cockpit in my novel were it not for Wise’s expert reporting. I encourage anyone interested in the intersection of aviation, technology, and psychology to read his work, especially his most recent book,
The Taking of MH370
. In
Dear Edward
, I have also drawn from the true black-box recording from Air France Flight 447 to write some of the dialogue of the pilots in my novel. My goal here was to accurately and respectfully portray their human experience. To the real people who have inspired my fictional work—Ruben van Assouw, Pierre-Cédric Bonin, Marc Dubois, David Robert, and all the passengers aboard Afriqiyah Airways Flight 771 and Air France Flight 447—I hope I have honored you. When I tried to reimagine these plane journeys and crashes, my compassion for you and your loved ones only grew. I hope that compassion is reflected in the story of the fictional Flight 2977.

For legal advice on “who gets what” when a plane crashes, I thank the expert counsel of Alicia Butler. If I’ve made any errors in that department, they are my own. Many thanks to my friend Abbey Mather for connecting me with Alicia. I am grateful to Frank Fair for educating me about the military. Robert Zimmermann provided invaluable information on planes and piloting. He answered all my questions at the beginning of the writing process and helped correct my mistakes at the end. Any remaining pilot-related errors are definitely mine.

My agent, Julie Barer, is deeply wonderful, and I am grateful to have her in my life. I thank her and everyone at The Book Group for their help and support. Jenny Meyer, Caspian Dennis, Nicole Cunningham, and Heidi Gall deserve special thanks.

Whitney Frick loves this book as much as I do, and guided me through an editing process that turned out to be a joy. I am so glad to have her as my editor. Susan Kamil is brilliant, and I’m grateful to have had the chance to work with her. Thanks also to Clio Seraphim for her work on the novel. And I couldn’t be happier that the book is in the hands of Venetia Butterfield at Viking Penguin in the UK.

Brettne Bloom and Courtney Sullivan believe in me and my work no matter what, which is a huge gift, and I love them. Stacey Bosworth and Libby Fearnley fall in this same camp, and have my equal gratitude. I am lucky to have many fierce, awesome women in my life.

My parents have always supported me, and I am fortunate to be their daughter. No one has done more for me than Cathy and Jim Napolitano. My niece, Annie, asked me to thank her in my book, so: thanks, Annie! And Katie too.

I love working at One Story (subscribe to One Story!) because of the people. I am thankful for Maribeth Batcha, Lena Valencia, and Patrick Ryan. I was one of the hundreds of people who loved Adina Talve-Goodman. She should have written many books, and beamed from many book jackets, so I wanted to put her name here. I miss you, Adina.

Helen Ellis, Hannah Tinti, and I are a three-legged stool. We’ve been reading one another’s work since 1996, and it’s their voices I hear in my head when I revise. Everything would be different, and less, without them in my life.

A Good Hard Look

Within Arm’s Reach

A
NN
N
APOLITANO
is the author of the novels
A Good Hard Look
and
Within Arm’s Reach
. She is also the associate editor of
One Story
literary magazine. She received an MFA from New York University; she has taught fiction writing for Brooklyn College’s MFA program, New York University’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies, and Gotham Writers Workshop. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two children.

Twitter:
@napolitanoann

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