Authors: Jeffrey Ford

Tags: #Historical Fiction, #Fiction, #Literary, #Historical, #Suspense Fiction, #Sagas, #American Historical Fiction, #Historical - General, #Fiction - Historical, #Depressions, #Spiritualists, #Swindlers and swindling, #Mediums, #Seances

The Girl in the Glass (33 page)

reporters: http://www.newsday.com/community/guide/lihistory/ny-history-hs725a,0,7485380.story.

Unfortunately, the Eugenics Record Office is not a darkly fanciful invention but a true historical institution. Granted, my character Dr. Agarias, as well as his rogue experimental research supported by shady powerbrokers, is a fictional construct, but for coherent historical information about the ERO and its racist implications there are two excellent books for the interested reader—
War Against the Weak: Eugenics
and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race
by Edwin Black and
The Unfit: A History of a
Bad Idea
by Elof Axel Carlson. On the Web one can also find Image Archive on the American Eugenics

Movement at http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/ and "Carrie Buck's Daughter: A Popular,

Quasi-Scientific Idea Can Be a Powerful Tool for Injustice" by Stephen J. Gould at

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1134/is_6_111/ai_87854861/print.

I believe the correlation that my character The Worm makes between Henry Ford's invention of the assembly line from his knowledge of slaughterhouses and Hitler's assembly line of genocide can be traced back to the controversial but interesting book by Charles Patterson,
Eternal Treblinka
. On a lighter note, for a wonderful Web site teeming with information about the history of Coney Island and its denizens, the reader should investigate
Greetings from Coney Island
authored by Jeff Stanton at

http://naid.sspsr.ucla.edu/coneyisland/index.html. For information pertaining to butterflies in Schell's

bugatorium, I consulted a number of basic field guides, and also a charming book
An Obsession with
Butterflies
by Sharman Apt Russell.

In addition to the textual references listed above, I had great help on this book by way of early readers—Rick Bowes, Michael Gallagher, and Bill Watkins. For a firsthand view of Long Island in the 1930s, I repeatedly tapped my old man, James E. Ford, who grew up in Amityville and lived his whole life on the island. And for the Spanish spoken by Isabel in the course of the story, a way of denoting the uniqueness of the culture represented by her and Diego without too badly confusing readers of English, I solicited help from my college Spanish teacher and longtime friend, Patricia Manley, and also my Spanish-language guru, Gabe Mesa.

I also owe a great debt of gratitude for the support and encouragement of my editor, Jennifer Brehl, and her indispensable editorial advice, which helped to make this book the best it could be. And last but by no means least, a thank-you to Howard Morhaim, my agent, for his steadfast and valuable guidance.

About the Author

JEFFREY FORD
is a professor of writing and early American literature at Brookdale Community College in New Jersey and the author of four previous novels: the award-winning
New York Times
Notable Book
The Physiognomy, Memoranda, The Beyond,
and most recently, the critically acclaimed
The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque.

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

Praise
for

JEFFREY FORD AND HIS PREVIOUS NOVEL
THE PORTRAIT OF MRS. CHARBUQUE

"Ford has created a masterpiece…. A marvelous, elegant book."

—
Austin Chronicle

"A strange and affecting tale of obsession, inspiration, and the supernatural, with a dash of murder thrown in…. The twists and turns of Mrs. Charbuque's commission keep the pages turning."

—
New York Times Book Review

"A standout literary thriller."

—
Publishers Weekly
(starred review)

"Art history, Hitchcockian suspense and Pynchonesque augury in equally bizarre measure,
Portrait
is a portrait of the artist at work as well as captivating intellectual fluff."

—
Sun
(Baltimore)

"Jeffrey Ford is a fascinatingly unconventional writer."

—
Locus

"Eccentrically satisfying…. Ford's union of fantasy, science, mysticism and art is set in a Victorian Gotham that recalls an Edith Wharton novel, only with furtive, menacing shadows lurking behind the hansom cabs."

—Salon.com

"Smart [and] spellbinding."

—
School Library Journal

"Chillingly surreal."

—
Kirkus Reviews

"Well-crafted, funny, charming, grotesque, bulging with arcane Victoriana,
The Portrait of Mrs.
Charbuque
is a deliciously quirky thriller."

—
Montreal Gazette

ALSO BY JEFFREY FORD

The Physiognomy

Memoranda

The Beyond

The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque

The Fantasy Writer's Assistant and Other Stories

Copyright

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

THE GIRL IN THE GLASS. Copyright © 2005 by Jeffrey Ford. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Palm Reader November 2008 ISBN 978-0-06-180079-5

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