Second Glance Part 45

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

Believing in ghosts is a bit like being pregnant-you either are, or you aren't, and there's no in between. So when I set out to create Ross Wakeman, I knew I needed to find people who not only believed, but could explain to me why. It was my good fortune to become acquainted with the Atlantic Paranormal Society-in particular, Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson, who took me out ghost hunting and convinced me that there is more to this world than meets the eye, and Andy Thompson, who explained what it's like to be a sensitive. What they taught me was so fascinating that I just may have to write another ghost story, if only so that I have a good reason to tag along again.

As promised: a nod to the Women Who Luv Books ladies who ardently helped me find my t.i.tle: Lori Maurillo Thompson, Sherry Fritzsche, Sandy Langley, Joyce Doherty, Laurie Barrows, Connie Picker, Sara Reynolds, Nancy Martin, Claudia Kari, Pamela Leigh, Suzi Sabolis, Linda Shelby, Carol Pizzi, Diane Meyers, Karen Sokoloff, and MJ Marcks.

Thanks to my usual tribe of professionals: Dr. Elizabeth Martin, Lisa Schiermeier, Dr. David Toub, Dr. Tia Horner, and two specialists-Dr. Aidan Curran and Dr. Daniel Collison; to my legal sources, Jennifer Sternick, Andrea Greene Goldman, Alan Williams, and Allegra Lubrano; and to my law enforcement guru, Detective-Lieutenant Frank Moran. Rhode Island State Police Detective Claire Demarais gets a special nod, for teaching me Forensics 101. Sindy Follensbee, thanks for transcribing so fast, and with a smile. Rebecca Picoult translated French for me tres vite tres vite and came to Ma.s.s MOCA with me; Jane Picoult, Steve Ives, and JoAnn Mapson all read drafts of this book and kept me from getting lazy. Aimee Mann put Ross's pain to music for me, and helped inspire me to translate it to fiction. To my agent, Laura Gross, I want to offer my grat.i.tude for an entire decade of service, and hopefully a good thirty or forty years more. Thanks to Laura Mullen and Camille McDuffie, the matchmakers who take my books and find me an adoring public. And I'd like to thank everyone at Atria Books for falling in love with this book as much as I did-but I need to single out Judith Curr, Karen Mender, Sarah Branham, Shannon McKenna, Craig Herman, and Paolo Pepe. My editor at Atria, Emily Bestler, is not only incredibly gifted at making me write better than I think I can, she is also a good, true friend and the best person to have in one's corner. and came to Ma.s.s MOCA with me; Jane Picoult, Steve Ives, and JoAnn Mapson all read drafts of this book and kept me from getting lazy. Aimee Mann put Ross's pain to music for me, and helped inspire me to translate it to fiction. To my agent, Laura Gross, I want to offer my grat.i.tude for an entire decade of service, and hopefully a good thirty or forty years more. Thanks to Laura Mullen and Camille McDuffie, the matchmakers who take my books and find me an adoring public. And I'd like to thank everyone at Atria Books for falling in love with this book as much as I did-but I need to single out Judith Curr, Karen Mender, Sarah Branham, Shannon McKenna, Craig Herman, and Paolo Pepe. My editor at Atria, Emily Bestler, is not only incredibly gifted at making me write better than I think I can, she is also a good, true friend and the best person to have in one's corner.

And finally, thanks to Kyle, Jake, and Samantha, who share their mom's time with a lot of imaginary characters, and to my husband, Tim, who makes my life possible.

AUTHOR'S NOTE.

This book is a work of fiction. However, the Vermont Eugenics Project in the 1920s and 1930s is not. It is a chapter of history that has only recently been rediscovered and that still causes great pain and shame to Vermonters of many different cultural backgrounds. The archives of the Eugenics Survey are housed today in the Public Records Office in Middles.e.x, Vermont- many examples of which serve as epigraphs in the middle section of this book.

Spencer and Cissy Pike, Gray Wolf, Harry Beaumont, and Abigail Alcott are characters I created, but Henry F. Perkins did did exist. As pointed out by Nancy Gallagher on her Web site "Vermont Eugenics: A Doc.u.mentary History" ( exist. As pointed out by Nancy Gallagher on her Web site "Vermont Eugenics: A Doc.u.mentary History" (www.uvm.edu/~eugenics), he was a professor of zoology at the University of Vermont who organized the Eugenics Survey of Vermont in conjunction with his course on heredity. He believed that through research, public education, and support for legislation, the growing population of Vermont's most problematic citizens might be reduced. His leaders.h.i.+p was instrumental in bringing about the pa.s.sage of Vermont's Sterilization Law in 1931, and he continued to teach genetics and eugenics until his retirement from UVM in 1945.

Although it was t.i.tled a Law for Human Betterment by Voluntary Sterilization, there are doubts about just how voluntary a procedure it truly was. Evidence suggests that a person could be sterilized simply if two doctors signed off on it. Thirty-three states enacted a sterilization law. During the war crimes trials after World War II, n.a.z.i scientists cited American eugenics programs as the foundation for their own plans for racial hygiene.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the ACLU targeted sterilization laws, leading to the successful repeal of many. Others were stripped of eugenic language and reworded to protect the rights of the individual. Several states have pa.s.sed resolutions officially censuring the American eugenics movement and expressing regret for their role in it. Vermont has not.

Henry Perkins died in 1956, just when the structure of DNA had been discovered. Reproductive technology and genetic diagnosis are the new face of eugenics. And in a strange case of history repeating itself, Human Genome Project research continues to be done in Cold Spring Harbor, New York-the site, in 1910, of America's newly formed Eugenics Record Office at the Station for Experimental Evolution.

For those interested in finding out more about eugenics, I have enclosed a bibliography of books and doc.u.ments that were instrumental to me during the writing of this book. I would also like to thank Fred Wiseman, Charlie Delaney, and Marge Bruchac for enlightening me from the Abenaki point of view; Mike Hankard and Brent Reader for initial Abenaki translations, and Joseph Alfred Elie Joubert from Odonak Indian Reservation, P. Que., Canada, for making corrections to the Abenaki phrases in the text, as well as teaching me proper p.r.o.nunciation. I am also indebted to Kevin Dann, who in 1986 recovered the ESV doc.u.ments, made sure the world stood up and took note, and then let me explore his files and his own imaginings in order to create a structure upon which I could then build my own. And finally, I am grateful to Nancy L. Gallagher, who graciously taught me what she knew from her research for Breeding Better Vermonters: The Eugenics Project in the Green Mountain State Breeding Better Vermonters: The Eugenics Project in the Green Mountain State, and whose command of the facts was invaluable. Readers interested in exploring this topic further should read that book or visit her Web site, "Vermont Eugenics: A Doc.u.mentary History" (www.uvm.edu/~eugenics). I made liberal use of her insights and doc.u.ments, which provided the historical materials for my novel. Without the work of these people, I never could have completed my own.

Finally, xeroderma pigmentosum is unfortunately a very real disease. If you'd like to learn more about XP or to make a donation, please visit www.xps.org.

Jodi Picoult July 2002

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

Anderson, Elin. Anderson, Elin. We Americans: A Study of Cleavage in an American City We Americans: A Study of Cleavage in an American City. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1937.Bandler, James. "The Perkins Solution." Vermont Sunday Magazine, Rutland Herald Rutland Herald, April 9, 1995.Dann, Kevin. "Playing Indian: Pageantry Portrayals of the Abenaki in the Early Twentieth Century." From a talk presented at a UVM conference, Burlington, Vermont, November 1999.Dolan DNA Learning Center, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, New York. "Image Archive on the American Eugenics Movement." Online resource, www.eugenicsarchive.org.Eugenics Survey of Vermont and the Vermont Commission on Country Life. Papers, Public Records Office, Middles.e.x, VT.Gallagher, Nancy L. Breeding Better Vermonters: The Eugenics Project in the Green Mountain State. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1999. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1999.Gallagher, Nancy L. "Vermont Eugenics: A Doc.u.mentary History." Online resource, www.uvm.edu/~eugenics.Kincheloe, Marsha R. and Herbert G. Hunt, Jr. Empty Beds: A History of Vermont State Hospital. Empty Beds: A History of Vermont State Hospital. Barre, VT: Northlight Studio Press, 1988. Barre, VT: Northlight Studio Press, 1988.Laws of Vermont. 31st Biennial session (1931): 19496. No. 174- An Act for Human Betterment by Voluntary Sterilization.Oatman, Michael. "Long Shadows: Henry Perkins and the Eugenics Survey of Vermont." Exhibit at Ma.s.s MOCA, Spring 2001.Wiseman, Fred. The Voice of the Dawn: An Autohistory of the Abenaki Nation. The Voice of the Dawn: An Autohistory of the Abenaki Nation. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2001. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2001.