Juliet's Nurse (35 page)

LEARN MORE

V
isit
www.loisleveen.com
to learn more about the medieval and Renaissance history of Verona, Italy, and to find reading group questions and resources for teaching
Juliet’s Nurse
along with
Romeo and Juliet
.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

N
ovel writing can sometimes be as sweet as honey, and other times as bitter as wormwood, and I offer great thanks to many sweet people who’ve kept me from turning bitter.

Rosemary Weatherston is such a keen reader and dear friend, she keeps making both my life and my books better. David Garrett proved ever collegial in helping me access myriad scholarly sources. Carol Frischmann, Naseem Rakha, Kathlene Postma, and Shelley Washburn read the draftiest of first chapters and convinced me that I really had a book. The Newberry Library supported my research with an Arthur and Lila Weinberg Fellowship, and Judy Wittner opened her home to me during my time in Chicago. Dr. Michael Slater and Dr. Shoshana Waskow provided medical counsel on a variety of fictive injuries and diseases. Obscure
materials on medieval beekeeping and church practices were located by Janie Rangel and translated by Armanda Balduzzi and Hanna Hofer. The far-flung participants in the Medieval-Religion, Mediev-L, and MedFem LISTSERVs gave me insight into the period that shaped my characters. I’ve consulted more scholarly books and articles than I can list here, but suffice it to say that without the work of many academics, I couldn’t have created this novel.

Here in Oregon, the wonderful members of Portland Urban Beekeepers not only provided a hands-on understanding of beekeeping, they taught me the power of a welcoming hive. Multnomah County Library is truly a treasure, and I am always grateful for its resources and its dedicated staff, and indebted to the voters and government officials here (and everywhere) who understand that library funding is critical to the well-being of the entire community. I continue to be sustained by readers and by the bookstore and library staffs around the country and abroad who eagerly embraced my first novel,
The Secrets of Mary Bowser
, and whose enthusiastic nagging about when I’d have another kept me from procrastinating as I wrote
Juliet’s Nurse
.

William Shakespeare endowed Angelica with just enough intriguing backstory, while also providing an inspiring model of literary appropriation. Laney Katz Becker proved once again that a sage agent benefits an author at every step of the process, and words can’t say how much I appreciate all she and her colleagues at Lippincott Massie McQuilkin do to help me write the best novels I can and to connect readers around the world with them. In our very first conversation, Emily Bestler won my heart
when she told me that because her name is on every book, she cares about each one as much as the author does, and she’s proven it true time and again. She and Megan Reid are not only savvy readers (and re-readers), they are also so warm, supportive, and funny that it is always a pleasure to work with them, even when they make me toil much harder than I ever thought I could. Any author might feel lucky to have one such editorial team, but I am extraordinarily blessed to benefit as well from the astute input of Anne Collins. Readers often do not realize how much goes into the making of a novel, but I owe a great debt to Jeanne Lee, Hillary Tisman, Mellony Torres, Alysha Bullock, Adria Iwustiak, Amanda Betts, and many, many other people at Emily Bestler Books/Atria Books and Knopf/Random House Canada for this beautiful book you (or your e-reader) now hold.

As ever, my deepest gratitude goes to Chuck Barnes, who has read countless drafts, engaged in spontaneous plotting sessions, put up with a too-often very moody writer, and courageously suffered through a research trip to beautiful Verona, Italy. Here’s to a love story that is always a comedy, and never a tragedy.

Photograph by John Melville Bishop

A
ward-winning author Lois Leveen dwells in the spaces where literature and history meet. Her work has appeared in numerous literary and scholarly journals, as well as
The New York Times
, the
Los Angeles Review of Books
,
Chicago Tribune
,
Huffington Post
,
Bitch
magazine,
The
Wall Street Journal
, the
Atlantic
, and on NPR. Lois gives talks about writing and history at universities, museums, and libraries around the country. She lives in Portland, Oregon, with two cats, one Canadian, and 60,000 honeybees. Visit her online at
LoisLeveen.com
and
Facebook.com/LoisLeveen
.

ALSO BY LOIS LEVEEN

The Secrets of Mary Bowser

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Contents

Dedication

Part One

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Part Two

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Author’s Note

Learn More

Acknowledgments

About the Author