The End of Innocence (30 page)

I offer deep thanks to the team at Sourcebooks. I especially thank my editor, Stephanie Bowen, for her insight, care, commitment, and humor. She not only understood what I was trying to say in this novel, but also made it much better. And, as fate would have it, she is a true-blood New England native from Concord, Massachusetts, with a strong history background and thus also provided great contributions to the descriptions of the New England people and places. She is a gift to an artist's craft.

I am equally indebted to DuPree Miller & Associates. I especially thank my agent, Lacy Lynch, for her wisdom, good-naturedness, encouragement, talent, and energy. She is a force of nature, and one of its very best.

I thank Derek Britt and Courtney Williams, who brought this story to the attention of DuPree Miller & Associates, and Rex Miller who brought it to their attention.

I thank Jack Getman, Nancy McMillen, and Jan McInroy for their generosity in helping bring this book to life, especially at its early stages. I thank the librarians at Harvard University, the Imperial War Museum, and the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. I truly appreciate military historian Jonathan Jordan's careful review and comments regarding World War I military matters.

My partner, Theodore Ryan, told me his favorite definition of love, taught to him by the beloved professor James Loder. Love is “the unconditional delight in the particularities of the other.” I thank all those in my life with whom I've shared such delight. I especially thank Theodore, my sons Alex and Michael, my mother (Sally), my late father, my family, and my friends who have journeyed with me. Thank you for being you.

Finally, I would like to publicly thank Reverend Gomes for what his work meant for me as I wrote this book. I enjoyed reading his sermons long past my graduation from Harvard. I use my last few words here to reprint a portion of a benediction to Harvard seniors he delivered, applicable to us all:

Go out there, then, with courage, grace, and imagination. We give you our love—a word not used much around here, and saved for your very last moments—and we commend you to the love of one another and to the greater love of a loving God. This now, at last, is the best that we can do for you. This is the best that there is and it is yours, so go for it, for God's sake, and for your own. Amen.

Allegra Jordan

Chapel Hill, NC 2014

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A
percentage
of
royalties
goes
to
support
the
work
of
the
Epiphany
School, a tuition-free school in Dorchester, Massachusetts. The school was cofounded by John H. Finley IV, whose own grandfather mentored a generation of Harvard students by focusing on the good in people and urging them to excellence.

Photo by Rex Miller

Allegra Jordan grew up in rural Alabama in the wake of the civil rights movement. She is an honors graduate of Harvard Business School and Samford University. Jordan has written numerous articles on leadership and innovation and bestselling cases for Harvard, and she published an award-winning magazine for the University of Texas School of Law. She directed marketing for USAToday.com, where readership went from 10,000 readers a month to 8.2 million. She was named a top executive under age forty in both Austin, Texas, and Birmingham, Alabama, and a rising star by
TIME
magazine. She serves on the board of the Southern Documentary Fund and is the founder of Innovation Abbey.
The End of Innocence
is her first novel.