Acknowledgments
Thank you to Mark Whipple, Dave Eckstein, and Catherine Rockwood, without whose encouragement, this novel would have been abandoned in its infancy.
To Von Long, Bill Burns, Erin Furby, Kirsten Edwards, Dave Coffman, Donna Royston, Don Schank, James Hyder, Anna MacDonald, and Diana Hardy for their support and advice, and to Danielle Ackley-McPhail and the Yesterday’s Dreamers for all their useful ideas concerning the craft of writing itself.
To my brother, Law Lamplighter, for recounting his vision of the City of Dis, which I reproduced to the best of my ability.
To Peter Atkins, for permission to reprint his poem, “Expectant Father to His Unborn Son.”
To Father Laurence and Brother Gerard for the idea about the nature of Hell, which they shared under a circumstance so strange that it would not be believed if I tried to explain it.
To my gracious editor, Jim Frenkel, and my dashing and knightly agent, Richard Curtis.
To Milton, whose title this one hopefully honors.
And, most important, to my mother, Jane Lamplighter, without whose selfless devotion to her grandchildren this book literally could not have been written.