Dedicated Words Which Writers Use

One of the first things we did when setting out to find people with memories of John when we began this project was identifying those individuals that played such an important part of his life that he dedicated his books to them. Who were they? Old friends from college? Family members? Other authors? People he’d met in since moving to Massachusetts? To cut to the chase...well...yes, some of all of the above.

Some were fairly easy to identify but most required some tracking down. But we found ‘em. All but two, that is.

• The Trolley to Yesterday (1988): For Richard, Beth, and Toby -- nobody succeeds without help.
• The Secret of the Underground Room (1990): To Lyla, a good friend in a difficult time.

We’re not sure the connection (if any) Beth has to Richard Curtis (John’s literary agent) or Toby Sherry (his editor at Dial), and our only lead on Lyla is that she may have been an employee of a New Hampshire-area bookstore during the late 1980s, around the time the book was written and subsequently published.

That said, if you’re one of these two people then we’d love to hear from you.