Amy Inspired - Bethany Pierce [122]
10. The novel concludes with the ending of Amy’s most recent short story. This is the only story we see her complete. How does the ending she chose—and the fact that she found one at all—influence your interpretation of the book overall?
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you, Aaron, for coming across the room to dance with me at that wedding and for the adventure you’ve brought into my life every day since. Always, thank you, Mom, Dad, Christy, and David for making me laugh, for encouraging my flights of fancy while keeping my feet on the ground. Mark and Mary, I’m indebted to you for your advice and support through a year of transitions.
Thanks to Andy McGuire, Dave Long, Paul Higdon, and the entire team at Bethany House; without you this book would never have realized its full potential. Raela Schoenherr, you are both a wonderful editor and a “kindred spirit.”
And finally, to the students who inspired me. Thank you Lindsey Bullinger and Tim Lu, for volunteering yourselves as characters (sorry to disappoint); here’s to afternoons under The Arch, break-dancing and heckling tour groups. Thank you, Kathy McCarty, for macaroni and book-club/movie night; I will forever regret that I missed your victory school bus derby race. Stephanie Albers, Laura Schwietering, Corinne Dowd, Katie Gorsuch, and Samantha Brendalen, I was the one with the grading rubric, but you were the ones raising the bar for me as both an instructor and a friend. And to the many others who brought their senses of humor, enthusiasm, and iMovie skills to the classroom: thank you for making those three years interesting— and for making my life easier than Amy’s.
After completing a master’s in Creative Writing and working as a visiting instructor at Miami University in Ohio, BETHANY PIERCE now lives with her husband in Charlottesville, Virginia, where she is a member of the McGuffy Art Center and continues to write. Her first book, Feeling for Bones, was one of Publishers Weekly’s Best Books of 2007.