I’m forever grateful that my search for a literary agent began and ended with the incomparable Alexandra Machinist, who plucked me from the slush pile in one whirlwind week, and whose faith in my writing makes everything possible.
My warmest thanks belong to Rachel Kahan, Lauren Kaplan, and all the wonderful team at Putnam, both for their reckless enthusiasm for Overseas and for their expert advice and guidance in turning the manuscript into a book people might actually want to read.
While I spent most of my professional life on the fringes of Wall Street, I turned to my dear friends Anne and David Juge for specifics on the structure of investment banks and capital markets divisions in particular. I’m deeply grateful for their perspective and their support; any dramatic license or outright error is, of course, entirely my doing.
I owe more than I can say to Sydney and Caroline Williams, who have supported and encouraged my writing career at every stage, and who show me every day how to be a better spouse, a better parent, and a better person.
To my parents, who gave me such a solid literary foundation; to Jana Lauderbaugh, who provided shrewd advice on the initial draft; and to my sister, who cheered each step along the journey: this book is as much yours as mine.
The love and loyalty of my family gave me the courage to attempt the lunatic challenge of writing a novel for publication. To my four precious children, and to my beloved husband, Sydney, I can only offer my heartfelt thanks and my promise that, next time, I’ll try not to stay up writing past four a.m. on a school night.
I owe a final debt to a young history professor whose name I no longer recall, though I can conjure her face and Dorothy Hamill haircut like a photograph in my brain. As a junior in college, I took her seminar course on turn-of-the-century Europe and the First World War, which shocked me into awareness of a generation of brilliant young men who’d charged from the trenches of the Western Front into oblivion. In creating the character of Julian Ashford, I borrowed biographical details from a number of these historical figures. Students of the period will recognize, among others, a dollop of Roland Leighton, a hint of Rupert Brooke, and pieces of Julian Grenfell, who lent my fictional Julian both his Christian name and his birthdate (the latter, I swear, by coincidence). But Ashford’s habits and personality are completely his own. He leapt from my brain onto the page, and I hope he does some lonely bit of justice to the men who, in dying, gave him life.
About the Author
A graduate of Stanford University with an MBA from Columbia University, Beatriz Williams spent several years advising senior executives on communications and corporate strategy before turning to the more productive pursuit of writing novels. She lives with her husband and four young children near the Connecticut shore, where she divides her time between writing and laundry.
Beatriz Williams, Overseas
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