TIMOTHY SCHAFFERT is the author of six previous novels: The Perfume Thief, The Swan Gondola, The Coffins of Little Hope, Devils in the Sugar Shop, The Singing and Dancing Daughters of God, and The Phantom Limbs of the Rollow Sisters. He is the Adele Hall Chair of English at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and coeditor of Zero Street, a literary fiction series of the University of Nebraska Press.