Ladies Now and Then by Marie Manning, writing as the advice columnist Beatrix Fairfax (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1944), was a lot of fun generally and provided details about ladies’ salons at stockbrokers’ offices during the Roaring Twenties. The novels of Edna Ferber and Mary Amelia St. Clair, writing as May Sinclair, are enjoyable sources about women’s emotional and social lives in the period of this novel. I particularly liked The Girls by Ferber (New York: P. F. Collier and Son, 1921) and Mary Olivier by Sinclair (New York: Macmillan, 1919).
Among the more modern resources for Dreamers of the Day were The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History by John M. Barry (East Rutherford, N.J.: Penguin, 2005); Sultry Climates by Ian Littlewood (Cambridge: Da Capo, 2002); and Flapper by Joshua Zietz (New York: Crown, 2006). And anyone attempting to write about American history would do well to consult Generations: The History of America’s Future, 1584–2069 by William Strauss and Neil Howe (New York: William Morrow, 1992).
The details of Lowell Thomas’s multimedia lecture about Allenby and Lawrence are from Lawrence of Arabia and American Culture by Joel C. Hodson (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1995). Thomas’s tours began in late 1919, not earlier, as indicated in this novel.
The 19 21 Cairo Conference rarely rates more than a few lines in texts referring to it, but A Peace to End All Peace by David Fromkin (New York: Henry Holt, 1989) is magisterial, and the title says it all. For my purposes, Churchill’s Folly by Christopher Catherwood (New York: Carroll and Graf, 2004) was more useful.
For Colonel Arnold Wilson, the best source is Late Victorian: The Life of Sir Arnold Wilson by John Marlowe (London: Cresset Press, 1967). Miss Fareed el-Akle is mentioned in many biographies of Lawrence and wrote an essay for Arnold Lawrence’s collection T. E. Lawrence by His Friends (op. cit.).
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.
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