The Toss of a Lemon (92 page)

Catherine Bush, Ven Begamudré, Elizabeth Evans, Suzanne Feldman, Tom Kealey, DD Kugler, Ian McGillis, T. Jayashree, Shelley Tepperman, Malena Watrous and Siân Williams—dear friends and valued mentors—read this manuscript in parts or in its entirety. Their suggestions and support were invaluable. Thanks, also, to my professors and colleagues in the programs at the Johns Hopkins University and the University of Arizona, who read and responded to segments of the book, as well as to Brenda O’Donnell and Ruth Smillie, who vetted my first Canada Council application, and to Stephen Elliott, who gave me a computer.

My thanks to the friends and relatives who hosted me for periods of writing and research, the course of which they paved in many ways. There were many, but those on whom I imposed the most were Sethurathnam (Ambi) Chithappa and Shyamala Chitthi, Raju Mama and Pattu Mami, T. Jayashree and Madan Rao, Merrily Weisbord, Joe and Maureen McGillis, Sujatha Akka and Raju Anna, Rathna Anna and Janaki Mani, Dhorai Anna and Padma Mani, Chris Yanda and Vicki Thoms, and, once again, my parents.

I am deeply grateful to Anne Collins of Random House Canada for her warmth and incisiveness; to Ann Patty of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for making our vision hers; to Bruce Westwood and Carolyn Forde at Westwood Creative Artists for taking this book so many places it would not otherwise have gone; and to Shyam Selvadurai, who got the whole process started. Their buoyant enthusiasm has been a gift.

My mother, father and grandmother, whose humour and compassion inspire me, believed in
The Toss of a Lemon
long before it existed and read it for me when finally it did. So did Geoffrey Brock, my companion and anchor, who, with our children, ensures that my life is full with satisfactions books cannot provide.

The writing of this book has been generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Le Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Quebec, a PEO Scholar Award, a Milton O. Riepe Summer Fellowship, a Monique Wittig Writer’s Scholarship, the MacDowell Colony, the Sacatar Colony and the American Academy in Rome. Excerpts have been published by
AGNI
Online and Prism International.