Yet the Unibrain can’t do it all—so a huge thanks goes to our editor, Rachel Kahan, and the rest of our amazing team at William Morrow for everything from the gorgeous cover art to the entire mechanism of getting our books into the hands of readers. We couldn’t do what we do without all of your hard work and support, as well as the unflagging efforts of our brilliant literary agents, Alexandra Machinist of ICM and Amy Berkower of Writers’ House, who have been our sisterhood’s biggest cheerleaders from the moment we first proposed writing together. (All right, it might have taken a little more persuasion.)
We can’t quite remember that first spark that led us to twentieth-century France for our third novel, but once we started diving into the ocean of books, memoirs, letters, and online databases on the two world wars and the Swinging Sixties, we discovered enough fascinating material for a lifetime of novels. While our main characters are fictional, the historical setting in which their stories take place is (as always) as accurate as possible, which often means hours spent chasing down all those tiny details and contemporary accounts that bring a novel to life. This space isn’t large enough to list all of our research sources, but for more absorbing stories of life inside the Paris Ritz, we happily refer readers to The Hotel on Place Vendôme by Tilar J. Mazzeo. For insight into the operation and daily life of French Resistance organizations, Lynne Olson’s detailed and riveting Madame Fourcade’s Secret War is a must-read. If anyone wants to read more about life behind the lines in World War I, Helen McPhail’s The Long Silence gives an excellent overview, while Ben Macintyre’s The Englishman’s Daughter provides an intimate and harrowing picture of life in one village in Picardy under German rule: readers will notice more than a passing resemblance between our Major Erich Hoffmeister and his real-life counterpart, Major Karl Evers, who really did demand that the chickens lay a particular number of eggs per day.
A vigorous nod to the Inn at Palmetto Bluff on the South Carolina coast for giving us beautiful shelter and sustenance (of the caffeinated and bubbly varieties) while we plotted out this book, and to the sunshine of the Florida panhandle for sustaining us as we finished our final revisions and typed The End. For the Unibrain, it is always work, work, work, because we believe in suffering for our craft. Thanks also to the Boden website for providing us stress-shopping during those trying times in an author’s life. Our closets thank you; the delivery man doesn’t.
There’s nothing scarier than sending a book off into the world (see stress-shopping, above). Thank you so much to all of the wonderful readers, bloggers, reviewers, librarians, and booksellers who make what we do possible. We appreciate your support, and your emails, Facebook posts, and Instagram stories, more than we can say. Huge hugs to our fellow authors, who have been there with us through characters that won’t cooperate and midnight trains to New Canaan for book events. We love you even if your name doesn’t begin with W. (Kristina McWorris, you’ll always be an honorary W to us!)
Finally, our grateful thanks (as always) to our husbands, children, and assorted pets for sharing your homes with our imaginary characters, and allowing us the time and space to get them on the page.
About the Authors
Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, and Karen White are the coauthors of the beloved New York Times bestselling novels The Forgotten Room and The Glass Ocean.
Beatriz Williams is the New York Times bestselling author of eleven novels, including A Hundred Summers, The Secret Life of Violet Grant, and The Summer Wives. A native of Seattle, she graduated from Stanford University and earned an MBA in finance from Columbia University, then spent several years in New York and London as a corporate strategy consultant before pursuing her passion for historical fiction. She lives with her husband and four children near the Connecticut shore, where she divides her time between writing and laundry.
Lauren Willig is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of twenty novels, including The Summer Country, The English Wife, and The Ashford Affair, as well as the RITA Award–winning Pink Carnation series. An alumna of Yale University, she has a graduate degree in history from Harvard and a JD from Harvard Law School. She lives in New York City with her husband, kindergartner, toddler, and ludicrous quantities of coffee.
Karen White is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of twenty-five novels, including Dreams of Falling and The Night the Lights Went Out. She currently writes what she refers to as “grit lit”—Southern women’s fiction—and has also expanded her horizons into writing a mystery series set in Charleston, South Carolina. After spending seven years in London, England, and attending the American School in London, she obtained a BS in management from Tulane University. She has two grown children and currently lives near Atlanta, Georgia, with her husband and two spoiled Havanese dogs.
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Also by Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, and Karen White
The Glass Ocean
The Forgotten Room
Beatriz Williams
The Golden Hour
The Summer Wives
Cocoa Beach
Wicked City
A Certain Age
Along the Infinite Sea
The Secret Life of Violet Grant
A Hundred Summers
Lauren Willig
The Summer Country
The English Wife
The Other Daughter
That Summer
The Ashford Affair
The Pink Carnation Series
Karen White
Dreams of Falling
The Night the Lights Went Out
Flight Patterns
The Sound of Glass
A Long Time Gone
The Tradd Street Series
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
all the ways we said goodbye. Copyright © 2020 by Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, and Harley House Books, LLC. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa
Cover photographs © Lipnitzki / Roger-Viollet / The Image Works (woman); © Keystone-France / Getty Images (street scene)
first edition
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
Digital Edition JANUARY 2020 ISBN: 978-0-06-293111-5
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-293109-2
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All the Ways We Said Goodbye Page 42