Shifting (28 page)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to the best agent in the universe, Marlene Stringer, for falling in love with Maggie Mae enough to take a risk on me. Without you, Marlene, this book never would have made it. And a huge thank-you to Emily Easton for believing in me, and for her unending patience and wisdom!

Thank you, Mom and Dad, my sisters Tiffiny, Brittany, and Natalie, and my brother, Matt, for reading and loving my book, even in its early stages.

Thanks to my beta readers, Nicole, Cyndi, Shelly, Kelli, Elana, Michelle, Bonny, Sarah, Heidi, and Janie, for loving the story enough to read it until the wee hours of the morning. And thanks to Pat and Cole for telling me the story was good enough, even when I was in the depths of self-doubt.

Thanks to my kids, for not giving me funny looks when I'd zone off in the middle of dinner or start vocalizing dialogue between two characters while we drove around town.

To the woman who made me realize that deep down inside, I am a writer—my sister and accomplice-in-writing, Suzette Saxton—thanks for daring me to start!

Last of all, with overflowing love and gratitude, I'd like to thank my husband, Jaime, for dealing with me staying up night after night, sometimes till dawn, to get the madness of this story down on paper.

Copyright © 2011 by Bethany Wiggins

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

First published in the United States of America in September 2011 by Walker Publishing Company, Inc., a division of Bloomsbury Publishing, Inc.

Electronic edition published in September 2011

www.bloomsburyteens.com

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Walker BFYR, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wiggins, Bethany.

Shifting / Bethany Wiggins. — 1st U.S. ed.

p. cm.

Summary: After bouncing from foster home to foster home since the age of five, almost-eighteen-year-old Maggie Mae Mortensen arrives in Silver City, New Mexico, to finish high school and try to escape her reputation as a trouble-maker, only to face ostracism in her new school and a band of evil Navajo Skinwalkers who want her dead.

ISBN 978-0-80272-281-2 (ebook)

[1.  Foster home care—Fiction.   2.  Shapeshifting—Fiction.   3.  Navajo Indians—Fiction.   4.  Supernatural—Fiction.   5.  Indians of North America—New Mexico—Fiction.   6.  High schools—Fiction.   7.  New Mexico—Fiction.]   I.  Title.

PZ7.W6382Sh 2011                [Fic]—dc22                2011005751