acknowledgments
I am privileged to work with Katherine Nintzel, the kind of editor that writers dream of, and the entire magnificent group at William Morrow. I want to thank Beth Vesel, my longtime agent and friend, for her vision and wise counsel; the English Department at Fordham University for supporting my creative work; and my close tribe of sisters, Cynthia Baker Zeitler, Clara Lester, and Catherine Baker-Pitts, who sustain and inspire me.
The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation gave me space and time to write. Anne Burt, Alice Elliott Dark, and Pamela Redmond Satran, who read some or all of the manuscript several times, form the core of my community of writers and friends. Karen Sacks, Executive Director of Volunteer Lawyers for Justice, paved the way for me with New Jersey legal experts, including Marvin Adames, Chief Municipal Prosecutor of the City of Newark; Clyde Otis, a municipal prosecutor; Alix Rubin, a partner at Entwistle & Cappucci; Nicole Masella at Hack, Piro, O’Day, Merklinger, Wallace & McKenna; and Carmela Novi at Casha & Casha. Thanks also to John Cusolito at Liberty Mutual Insurance Company.
I am grateful for the support of my parents, Bill and Tina Baker, and my mother-in-law, Carole Kline. Finally, my husband, David, and sons, Hayden, Will, and Eli, are at the center of everything; they make my life rich.
also by CHRISTINA BAKER KLINE
FICTION
The Way Life Should Be
Desire Lines
Sweet Water
NONFICTION
About Face: Women Write About What They See When
They Look in the Mirror (coedited with Anne Burt)
Room to Grow: Twenty-two Writers Encounter the Pleasures
and Paradoxes of Raising Young Children (editor)
Child of Mine: Original Essays on Becoming a Mother (editor)
The Conversation Begins: Mothers and Daughters Talk About Living Feminism
(coauthored with Christina Looper Baker)
Copyright
“somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond” excerpt copyright © 1931, 1959, 1991 by the Trustees for the E. E. Cummings Trust. Copyright © 1979 by George James Firmage, from Selected Poems by E. E. Cummings, Introduction and Commentary by Richard S. Kennedy. Used by permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation.
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
BIRD IN HAND. Copyright © 2009 by Christina Baker Kline. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, 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 hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
branch illustration from iStockPhoto
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kline, Christina Baker, 1964–
Bird in hand: a novel / Christina Baker Kline.—1st ed.
p. cm
ISBN 978-0-688-17724-9
1. Marriage—Fiction. 2. Friendship—Fiction. 3. Domestic fiction. 4. Psychological fiction. I. Title
PS3561.L478B57 2009
813’.54—dc22
2008049966
EPub Edition © 2009 ISBN:9780061989803
09 10 11 12 13
ISBN 978-0-06-182963-5 (international edition)
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