Acknowledgments
I am tremendously grateful to my agent, Trena Keating, who believed in me long before there was even a book to believe in, and who possesses the uncanny ability to be right about pretty much everything; and to Sarah Cantin, my editor, who is the kind of editor writers talk about, wistfully, as “surely existing somewhere out there.” Thank you to Judith Curr and the entire team at Atria, without whom this dream of mine would never have come true.
I am also indebted to these many friends and mentors for their support of my writing and for extraordinary kindnesses done over the years: Dick Allen; Todd Boss and the Motionpoems team; Kevin Brockmeier; Geraldine Brooks and Tony Horwitz; Connie Brothers, Deb West, Jan Zenisek, and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop staff; Ethan Canin; Edward Carey; Sam Chang; Leo Damrosch; Gerald Dawe, Deirdre Madden, Lilian Foley, Jonathan Williams, the late E. A. Markham, and the Trinity College Dublin Creative Writing Program; Noah Dorsey; Jennifer duBois; Jehanne Dubrow; Denise Duhamel; Jose Falconi; Jerry Hendrix; Luisa Igloria; Joan Jakobson; Michael Khandelwal, Lisa Hartz, and the Muse Writers Center; David Lehman; Erin McKnight, and Queen’s Ferry Press; Jim McPherson; Keija Parssinen; Marilynne Robinson; Tim Seibles; Michael Shinagel; Michael Simms, Guiliana Certo, and Autumn House Press; John Stauffer; Tony Swofford; Gary Thompson and the Naval Institute Press; everyone at Union Literary; Trina Vargo, Mary Lou Hartman, and the U.S.-Ireland Alliance; Katherine Vaz. Thanks also to Gavitt, Kate, Kelly, Laura, Liz, Lizz, Lyndsey, Mallory, Stacey, Eric, Jessica, Lea, Rob, Austin, Josh, Loren, Jason, Alyssa, Dee, Erin, and Isaac, for over a decade of friendship; and to the many cherished friends of the Navy, Virginia Beach, and Galilee I’ve made over the past several years.
Thank you, especially, to my family—Dad, Mom, Christine, Eric, Laura, Marie, Jim, Chris, Jay, Carolyn, Hank, Josie, Arleen, and Farrell. And to Will, for his love and for our daughters, the greatest gifts of all; if there is magic, surely it’s in them.
Victoria Kelly received her M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop; a B.A. summa cum laude from Harvard University; and an M.Phil. in creative writing from Trinity College Dublin, where she was a US Mitchell Scholar. She is the author of the poetry collection When the Men Go Off to War. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in the anthologies Best American Poetry 2013 and The Autumn House Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry, as well as Alaska Quarterly Review, Southwest Review, Prairie Schooner, and North American Review. She lives in Virginia with her husband and daughters.
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2016 by Victoria Kelly
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First Atria Books hardcover edition March 2016
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Interior design by Kyoko Watanabe
Jacket design by Alan Dingman
Jacket photograph by Detroit Publishing Company, Luna Park, Coney Island, N.Y.
Author photograph by Jessica Van Nest
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kelly, Victoria.
Mrs. Houdini : a novel / by Victoria Kelly. — First Atria books hardcover edition.
pages ; cm
I. Title.
PS3611.E4575M77 2016
813'.6—dc23
2015026564
ISBN 978-1-5011-1090-0
ISBN 978-1-5011-1092-4 (ebook)
Mrs. Houdini Page 29