Landfalls (50 page)

Many teachers and mentors have helped light the way for this book. Thank you, Lucy Corin, Karen Joy Fowler, Lynn Freed, Pam Houston, Alessa Johns, Yiyun Li, Kevin “Mc” McIlvoy, Elissa Schappell, and Jim Shepard.

I am indebted to several organizations and individuals for their generous support of my work. I completed a first draft of this book while a student in the UC Davis Masters in Creative Writing program. Hedgebrook provided me with the incomparable gift of a month's residency in 2010. A 2013 Promise Grant from the Sustainable Arts Foundation allowed me to devote time to completing the manuscript. The Maurice Prize, established and funded by John Lescroart, has been a great boon to emerging writers from UC Davis for many years. Thank you, all.

My heartfelt gratitude, collectively, to everyone who has read and commented on parts of this book over the years: the Davis Writers Group; participants in the Sacramento Master Writers weekend workshops; the brilliant and supportive women I met at Hedgebrook; my wonderful classmates at UC Davis; the regulars at Don Schwartz's Tuesday night creative writing class at the Davis Art Center; the ASH Writing Group; and fellow workshoppers at Squaw Valley and Tin House. For assistance with research questions, thank you, Eric Berti, Sarah Curtis, Rachel Fuchs, Judy Kalb, Ricardo Lezama, Lynda Newman, Jesper Olsson, and Dimitri Salichon. Any historical inaccuracies are obviously my fault alone.

For support of the variously moral, literary, and culinary varieties, thank you, Carlos Davidson, Valerie Fioravanti, Teresa Herlinger, Cynthia Kaufman, Marian Mabel, Jen Marlowe, Linda Matthew, Paul Rauber, Erica Lorraine Scheidt, Cora Stryker, Josh Weil, and Elise Winn. Chris Chang and Rae Gouirand offered not only their warm and indispensable friendship but the gift of undistracted writing time in their homes. Thank you, thank you. And I owe a particular debt of gratitude to Susan Wolbarst, who read nearly every page of this novel, many of them more than once, including hundreds of pages I ultimately discarded. Greater love hath no writer friend than this.

I am inordinately lucky when it comes to family. My mother, Atsuko Williams, and my sister, Mari McQuaid, always expressed confidence that I would publish a book, even through the long decades when there was little evidence to support their faith. My in-laws, Norman and Rachel Fuchs, offered unflagging moral support, bought references for me, and funded a research trip to Paris and Albi. My children, Julian Fuchs and Eliot Williams, can scarcely remember a time when their mother was not working on this book. Thank you, guys, for your patience, your love, and your always insightful and timely encouragement. My husband, Dan Fuchs, has been chief breadwinner, co-parent extraordinaire, head chef, and first reader. Your love and your belief in me have made my entire adult life possible. And now this.

 

A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Naomi J. Williams
lives in Northern California with her family.
Landfalls
is her first novel. You can sign up for email updates
here
.

    

 

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CONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright Notice

Dedication

Epigraph

Map

Prologue: Galley Stoves

  
1. Items for Exchange

  
2. Lamanon at Sea

  
3. Concepción

  
4. Snow Men

  
5. Cenotaph Island

  
6. Fog

  
7. Letters from Monterey

  
8. A Monograph on Parasites

  
9. Dispatches

10. The Report

11. Among the Mangroves

12. Skull House

13. Permission

14. Relics

Epilogue: Folie à Plusieurs

Afterword

A Note About the Author

Copyright

 

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

18 West 18th Street, New York 10011

Copyright © 2015 by Naomi J. Williams

Map copyright © 2015 by John Gilkes

All rights reserved

First edition, 2015

The following chapters have been previously published, in slightly different versions: “Items for Exchange” (
Sycamore Review
), “Lamanon at Sea” (
A Public Space
), “Snow Men” (
One Story
), “The Report” (
American Short Fiction
), and “Folie
à
Plusieurs” (
Ninth Letter
).

eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to [email protected]

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Williams, Naomi J., 1964–

    Landfalls / Naomi J. Williams. — First edition.

        pages cm

    ISBN 978-0-374-18315-8 (hardcover) — ISBN 978-0-374-71247-1 (e-book)

    1.  Scientific expeditions—Fiction.   I.  Title.

PS3623.I55925 L36 2015

813'.6—dc23

2014039367

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