Of a Feather

by Dayna Lorentz

  Secondary feathers—the slightly shorter long feathers on a bird’s wing that are closest to the bird’s body when the wing is extended.

  Tidbits—small, cut-up bits of raw meat used by falconers as treats for their birds to train them to do what the falconers want. For example, a falconer offers tidbits to get a hawk to hop to the fist or fly to the fist from a perch.

  Whitewash—white streaks with brownish clumps “pooped” out by an owl, though the white parts are more similar to human pee and the brown clumps are . . . well, poop. See also Mute.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to my amazing editor, Amy Cloud. I feel so lucky that this book found its way to you. You zeroed in on scenes and sentences that I immediately recognized as needing another pass, and you asked all the right questions to help me tell the story I meant to tell on the page. Your support and encouragement inspired me anew for each revision. I am thrilled that you are guiding Rufus and Reenie into the world.

  A huge thank-you to my agent, Faye Bender. You saw the potential in this story from the start and helped it grow from a fledgling idea into a free-flying novel in the world. I am so grateful for your support, encouragement, and expertise.

  Thank you to everyone at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and especially to designers Kaitlin Yang and Sharismar Rodriguez, managing editor Mary Magrisso, copyeditor Susan Buckheit, Samantha Bertschmann on the production staff, and the wonderful John Sellers and Lisa DiSarro in publicity and marketing. Rufus, Reenie, and I are lucky to have such a crack team behind us! And thank you, Izzy Burton, for your gorgeous artwork. Your first sketch captured the heart of the story, and everything else has grown beautifully from there.

  I am grateful for the support I receive at The Book Group. Thank you to Lora Fountain and Annelie Geissler for representing Rufus and Reenie abroad.

  Thank you to my foreign publishers for bringing this story to readers around the world.

  In researching this book, I relied upon the guidance of the following patient and generous people: Thank you to Rob Waite and the Green Mountain Falconry School for introducing me to the real world of falconry and a feisty little hawk named Monty. Thank you, Cat Wright Parrish and especially Craig Newman of Outreach for Earth Stewardship, for helping me understand the hard work of rehabilitating wild birds and the dangers they face in our world. Thank you to the staff at the Vermont Institute of Natural Science for giving me a tour of your facilities and letting me stretch my “wings” in a flight pen. And thank you to Hon. Alison Arms and Gail Straw for letting me bounce ideas off you. Any errors or inaccuracies are my own or represent tweaks made with creative license for the purposes of my story.

  It’s a rare thing to find critique partners who are not only incredible readers of your work, but who are also wonderful friends and supports in your life. Thank you, Rachel Carter and Margot Harrison, for holding my hands through the years and being the thorough and honest readers I’ve needed. Thank you, Tui Sutherland, for being there for me always, sometimes literally in the middle of the night, and for pointing out that Rufus’s voice should be first. And thank you to Ellen Booraem, Kekla Magoon, and everyone at Kindling Words East for listening to those first words on the page. Thank you to Kate Messner for letting me pester you for title ideas, and to Donna Smith for helping me find the one. And thank you to the fantastic Vermont writers’ community for providing such a warm creative home.

  Finally, a ginormous thank-you to my family. To my mom and dad, Chris and John, thank you for the years of support and encouragement. To my brother, Jordan, thanks for checking in and pushing me forward. To my kids, Evie and Josh, thank you for inspiring this story and cheering me on as I wrote it. To my husband, Jason, thank you for listening to all my ideas and helping me sort the wheat from the chaff; for reading countless sentences and helping me make them better; for lovingly debating all the issues, large and small; and for supporting me along the way over all these years.

  Visit hmhbooks.com to find all of the books in the Vanderbeekers series.

  About the Author

  Author photo by Andy Duback

  DAYNA LORENTZ is the author of the Dogs of the Drowned City trilogy and the No Safety in Numbers trilogy. She has worked in and around the foster care system, most recently as a law clerk in the Vermont family courts, but she only just started exploring the sport of falconry. Dayna lives in Vermont with her husband and two children.

  Learn more at daynalorentz.com

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