It is possible for me to draw a line from every book I have ever read to this one. Maybe this is less true in later books, but this is my first, and everything is in here. However, I owe a particular debt to Christ in Concrete by Pietro di Donato, to Kevin Baker’s gorgeous New York fiction, to The Godfather by Mario Puzo, and of course, to The Sopranos—which is not a book, but whose richly realized characters helped me understand the importance of getting violence and love to coexist on the page. The paper “Origins of the Sicilian Mafia: The Market for Lemons” by Arcangelo Dimico, Alessia Isopi, and Ola Olsson provided direct inspiration for an important scene. Antonia would not have had the same translation of Metamorphoses as I do, but I am attached to my copy, translated by Charles Martin.
My remarkable network of family and friends served as emotional ballast, home base, personal chef, first reader. This wouldn’t exist without any of you:
Mom, you are my North Star. I am of and because of you.
Dad, thank you for teaching me to read, and to ROAR.
My brother, Adam, follows his heart; he always has; he gives me courage to do the same.
Nancy Veerhusen, Jana McAninch, Emma McAninch, and Violet Wernham expanded my understanding of family, and I am more loving, more empathetic, and smarter because of it; this book is better because of it.
I am immensely grateful to the Galison-Jones-Freymann clan. Mia and Sax, thank you for housing me the first fall I worked on this book in earnest. Thank you, along with Marion and Gerry, for sharing your family and its stories with me, and for telling me which is the best bagel place in New York. Carrie and Peter, thank you for letting me write in your Wellfleet house, which has solved every case of writer’s block I’ve ever brought to it. Thank you all for giving this California girl an East Coast home.
Katie Henry has been my role model since I was sixteen; thank you for doing this first and answering all my panicked questions. I hope to move through the world with a fraction of your grace and humor. Rob, thank you for the tour of Arthur Avenue. Emily Beyda read an early draft when I didn’t think I could write another word and gave me feedback that enabled me to keep going. Tessa Hartley housed me during that same nomad fall I began to really work on this; some of what’s here was written on her porch in New Orleans. Ezra and Nick Paganelli are the official keepers of my soul and sanity; thank you for snack cake and sips and scaloppine, for Sunday dinners and shouting. All anyone needs to know about Alyssa May Gold is that despite living together when we were nineteen, she’s still willing to be my friend. But on top of that, she is a force of nature, an incisive and feeling artist, and she has talked me down from countless emotional and creative ledges. My teachers Laura Slatkin and Christopher Trogan gave me many of the stories I love most, and a whole new language in which to consider them. Kathryn Grantham and the staff at Black Bird Bookstore have been an inimitable support as I edited; thank you for the privilege of spending my working days talking to people about books. And I would be remiss without thanking Fresh Direct the cat, without whose persistent weight on my feet I never would have been able to sit still long enough to finish even a single chapter.
I was not alone for any of this, even when I was, technically, by myself. Sam, loving you is the honor of my life. If all I had been given was you, dayenu.
And reader, I cannot believe you are here. I am grateful and humbled. Thank you is wildly insufficient.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Naomi Krupitsky was born in Berkeley, California, and attended NYU's Gallatin School of Individualized Study. She lives in San Francisco, but calls many places home. The Family is her first novel.