Thirty Girls (40 page)

T
HE AUTHOR WISHES
particularly to thank Melanie Thernstrom for her article “Charlotte, Grace, Janet and Caroline Come Home” (
New York Times Magazine
, May 8, 2005), from which she shamelessly lifted details and wove them into fiction in the name of telling a version of the story of these girls. She also acknowledges threads gathered from the following work:

The Scars of Death, Children Abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda
, based on research conducted by Rosa Ehrenreich, edited by Yodon Thonden and Lois Whitman (1997, Human Rights Watch).

The Anguish of Northern Uganda
by Robert Gersony.

“Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Among Former Child Soldiers Attending a Rehabilitative Service and Primary School Education in Northern Uganda” by Emilio Ovuga, Thomas O. Oyok, and E. B. Moro,
African Health Sciences
, September 2008.

“Report of Religious Beliefs of Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army,” 2005, compiled by Lt. Col. Richard W. Skow, an American defense attaché to the U.S. Embassy (with contributions by Brigadier Kenneth Bama, Dr. Ray Amiro, and Major Jackson Achana, LRA technician to 1994 acting peace coordinator).

For more on the nonfiction terrain of this particular story, you might look at “This We Came to Know Afterward,” published by the author
initially in
McSweeney’s
(Winter 2000) and subsequently in
The Best American Travel Writing 2001
, edited by Paul Theroux and Jason Wilson (Houghton Mifflin).

If it had not been for Angelina Auytum, head of the Concerned Parents Association in Uganda, and her efforts to inform the world of the plight of the abducted children, the author might never have learned of it, never come to know more about it, and never have written this book. Many thanks go to her.

And finally to Jordan Pavlin, beloved editor, for her incomparable attentions and care, the author is forever grateful.

Susan Minot is an award-winning novelist, short-story writer, poet, and screenwriter. Her first novel,
Monkeys
, was published in a dozen countries and won the Prix Femina Étranger in France. Her last novel,
Evening
, was a worldwide best seller and became a major motion picture. She teaches at New York University and lives with her daughter in New York City and on North Haven island in Maine.

Other titles by Susan Minot available in eBook format

Evening
• 978-0-307-75878-1

Poems 4 A.M
. • 978-0-307-95875-4

Rapture
• 978-0-375-41442-8

For more information, please visit
www.aaknopf.com

Poems 4 A.M
.

Rapture

Evening

Folly

Lust & Other Stories

Monkeys