Mildred Rosenquist really did work at Halle’s Department Store and dated Bob Hope when he lived in Cleveland, though before the period during which this novel takes place. Other characters were merely suggested by history. For example, T. E. Lawrence is thought to have known the German Jewish intelligence officer Max von Oppenheim when both men worked near Jerablus in northern Syria, under the cover of archaeological research. Karl Weilbacher, however, is fictional. His name and some details of his childhood were borrowed from those of Massimo Weilbacher’s grandfather. The real Karl Weilbacher was indeed in Cairo in 1921, but he wasn’t a spy—as far as we know! He later settled in Italy, where his grandson grew up to become the Milanese lawyer who helped me so much with A Thread of Grace.
Early in the twentieth century, Mrs. Emily Rieder taught at the American Mission School in Jebail. Letters to her from the young T. E. Lawrence have been preserved; the one in which Lawrence asked Mrs. Rieder to obtain Colt .45 pistols for him was the impetus for this story.
The Shanklin family is entirely fictional. The narrator’s name honors the memory of a woman who taught freshman English students to diagram sentences at Glenbard East High School in Lombard, Illinois, in the 1960s. I know almost nothing about the real Agnes Shanklin, who died many years ago, but she laid the foundation for everything I have written since 1965. This book is, in part, a long overdue thank-you note. May her name be remembered.
As always, I have greatly benefited from the comments and suggestions of a number of prepublication readers. The following have influenced this novel, and I am grateful: Susanna Bach, Richard Cima, Mary Dewing, Louise Doria, Linda Eastwood, Miriam Goderich, Martin McHugh, Nancy Miller, Daniel Russell, Donald Russell, Martha Smith, Kate Sweeney, Ann Thoma, Bonnie Thompson, Jennifer Tucker, and Polly Weissman.
My gratitude goes as well to my superb agents, Jane Dystel and Miriam Goderich, to Robin Locke Monda for the jacket design, and to the team at Random House: Nancy Miller, Lea Beresford, Simon Sullivan, Jennifer Hershey, Dennis Ambrose, Barbara Fillon, and Jennifer Huwer. It’s a real pleasure working with you all.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MARY DORIA RUSSELL is the author of The Sparrow, Children of God, and A Thread of Grace. Her novels have won nine national and international literary awards, including the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the James Tiptree Award, and the American Library Association Readers’ Choice Award. The Sparrow was selected as one of Entertainment Weekly’s ten best books of the year, and A Thread of Grace was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Russell lives in Cleveland, Ohio. Contact her at www.MaryDoriaRussell.info.
ALSO BY MARY DORIA RUSSELL
The Sparrow
Children of God
A Thread of Grace
This is a work of fiction. Though some incidents, dialogue, and characters are based on the historical record, the work as a whole is the product of the author’s imagination.
Copyright © 2008 by Mary Doria Russell
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
RANDOM HOUSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Photograph on VOMITING WAS ONLY ONE OF SEVERAL ELEMENTS: Gertrude Bell
Photographic Archive, Newcastle University
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Russell, Mary Doria
Dreamers of the day: a novel/Mary Doria Russell.
p. cm.
1. Women teachers—Fiction. 2. Lawrence, T. E. (Thomas Edward), 1888–1935—Fiction. 3. Churchill, Winston, 1874–1962—Fiction. 4. Bell, Gertrude, 1868–1926—Fiction. 5. Middle East—History—1914–1923—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3568.U76678D74 2008 813'.54—dc22 2007024665
www.atrandom.com
eISBN: 978-1-58836-675-7
v3.0_r1
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