A Note on the World of This Book

Wilhelmina lives in Watertown, Massachusetts, which is a real place and my own home as I write this note. In fact, Wilhelmina's apartment is modeled on my apartment during Election Week 2020, right down to the noisy furnace in her basement, the long hill, and the steep backyard. Mount Auburn Cemetery is a real place, a cemetery but also a botanical garden and an arboretum, and I did happen to visit it during a snowstorm on the Friday before the election. There is a giant maple tree outside the Watertown Free Public Library, and it was indeed wearing a knitted tube dress that week. Several restaurants in Watertown Square closed during the pandemic, including my favorite Italian restaurant and a Tunisian sandwich shop I loved. There is a little forest path connecting Oliver Street with Marion Road near the stadium, just like the path Wilhelmina and James walk together, spotting a pileated woodpecker on their way. The man Wilhelmina regularly sees standing in the middle of an impossible Boston-area intersection with a MAGA sign is based on a real person. There was an outdoor mask mandate in Cambridge. When you went to the glasses store to pick up your glasses, they did come to the door to unlock it for you, and you weren't allowed to touch anything in the store besides your glasses. My dental hygienist was dressed like an astronaut; maybe yours was too.

All of this is to say that a lot of the details in this book are drawn from real life. Many others, however, are made up. There is no Lupa Building in Watertown, nor is there an Alfie Fang's, unfortunately. Readers familiar with Watertown might be able to follow Wilhelmina on her walks around town, but her driving route to the grocery store might leave you scratching your heads a little bit. There is no Museum of Armenia in Watertown, but the Armenian Museum of America is on Main Street, and I recommend a visit. Watertown is the home of many descendants of the survivors of the Armenian Genocide of 1915–1917.

James's bird cams are real, and wonderful beyond description. Go to the Cornell Lab Bird Cams channel on YouTube and scroll down; you'll find the Panama cam and the Royal Albatross cam easily. In a moment of serendipity, albatross female LGL did in fact lay her egg on November 7, 2020, the same day the election was called. If you decide to spend some time with these gigantic, funny, beautiful albatrosses, I hope you will find, as I did, that watching the careful ministrations of the rangers from the New Zealand Department of Conservation who devote their time to caring for these gentle giants makes you feel a little bit better about humanity.

The aunts' home in northeastern Pennsylvania is in a town I left unnamed, but is loosely based on my own childhood home in rural NEPA. The Bunker Hill Monument in Boston was closed to tourists during the early months of the pandemic, and I don't know whether park rangers were providing private tours in reality, or only in my imagination. Brian Sims and Steve McCarter, both Democratic members of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives at the time, made national news on October 3, 2013 when they introduced legislation to legalize same-sex marriage in Pennsylvania. The election results and news headlines Wilhelmina's family is coping with during election week 2020 are all real.

James's "Birds Aren't Real" bumper sticker is a reference to the Birds Aren't Real movement, a satirical conspiracy theory developed by Peter McIndoe in 2017, for the purpose of making fun of other conspiracy theories. The idea is that birds are actually drones, developed by the US government to spy on American citizens. If you decide to look into it, you're in for a treat.

The outer space exploration game Julie and Wilhelmina play together, Starcom: Nexus, is a real game, created by an independent game developer who happens to be my husband. I hope you'll forgive the indulgence of this coded love note. I put at least one in every book, but this one is more noticeable than the others.

Finally, an important note about Wilhelmina's health. When I wrote and rewrote this book in 2021 and 2022, I modeled Wilhelmina's thoracic outlet syndrome after my own long-term experience of hand, arm, shoulder, and neck pain, diagnosed as thoracic outlet syndrome two decades ago. However, in the summer of 2023, around the time this book was about to enter copyediting, I began to experience an extended period of unexplained dizziness. Eventually, an MRI informed us that I had a brain condition causing my cerebellum, the lower, back part of the brain, to be pulled into my spinal column. The cerebellum orients us in space. Mine was under pressure; hence, my dizziness.

The condition, called Arnold-Chiari Malformation Type I, is correctable by surgery. When I met with my new neurosurgeon, he shared some of the other symptoms of Chiari: hand, arm, shoulder, and neck pain. Tingling in the hands. I told the neurosurgeon that I had those symptoms as part of my thoracic outlet syndrome. He told me that in fact, my symptoms were classic Chiari, and that thoracic outlet syndrome is difficult to diagnose. He told me that it was likely I'd been misdiagnosed.

It's scary to sit in a neurosurgeon's office and understand that he may soon be drilling into the back of your head. It's confusing to learn that something you've known about your health for decades might in fact be wrong. Nonetheless, one of my first thoughts in that moment was, Oh no! But if I don't have thoracic outlet syndrome, Wilhelmina probably doesn't have it either!

My characters are real to me. I expect many readers can understand this, because your favorite characters are real to you too. It was distressing to discover that I might have misdiagnosed my girl, leaving her vulnerable to unexplained and unresolved suffering. But it was also too late to revise the book. There are some changes you can make in copyediting, but casually inserting a brain condition for which your protagonist needs brain surgery is not one of them. Even if there had been time for a change like that, it wouldn't have been right for the book.

And so I asked my editor, Andrew Karre, if he thought it might make sense for me to talk about this in my author's note. Because just as I modeled Wilhelmina's disability off of my own experiences, I'm now in a unique position to predict some things that might be in her future. As I write this note in late November 2023, it's been five weeks since my own surgery to create more space for my crowded cerebellum. It's been a strange time, but I've gotten through it, and now I'm healing. Here's what I solemnly believe: if Wilhelmina, like me, has a symptomatic Chiari Malformation, I believe she'll find out about it at some point in her life when she's equipped to handle the information. If she has surgery, I believe that the surgery will resolve her symptoms. Many, many people will support her. The resilience she's worked so hard to develop will serve her well. It'll be a challenging time, but she'll be surrounded by love. Wilhelmina is going to have a good life.