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“Briar!” she called.
“It ain’t running away without us!” he yelled in reply, and climbed back into the house.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks are due to my sister Kim, paramedic and nurse-to-be, for crash medical talks—any errors here in the descriptions of disease and treatment are strictly my own. Thanks also to my husband, Tim, for the encouragement and advice that saw me through a most worrisome first draft; and to Rick Robinson once again for all his help. Emelan and Summersea would not have their present shape, defenses, and currency without him.
I also owe a debt of research to books like William H. McNeill’s Plagues and Peoples, Frederick F. Cartwright and Michael D. Biddiss’s Disease as History, and Laurie Garrett’s The Coming Plague, about the role that disease plays in human history and culture.
As I close this quartet, I would like to thank again the publishers who helped to see me through this bold new creative venture of mine, the editors and assistants at Scholastic Press here in the U.S. and at Scholastic Children’s Books in the U.K. Between all of us, we have created books we can be quite proud of. Thanks also to my literary agents at Harold Ober Associates, always a safe port in any storm. My parents, Wayne and Mary Lou Pierce, supplied me with research as well as emotional support. To them and to Thomas Gansevoort, this series’s creative godfather, I give my heartfelt gratitude.
