The Sweetheart (32 page)

Authors: Angelina Mirabella

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I found inspiration and information for this novel from the following texts: Bernard Malamud's
The Natural,
Tess Slesinger's “On Being Told That Her Second Husband Has Taken His First Lover,” Jeff Leen's biography of Mildred Burke,
The Queen of the Ring: Sex, Muscles, Diamonds, and the Making of an American Legend,
Ruth Leitman's documentary,
Lipstick & Dynamite, Piss & Vinegar: The First Ladies of Wrestling,
and two highly unreliable but infinitely colorful autobiographies by two of those first ladies: Penny Banner's
Banner Days
(with Gerry Hostetler) and Lillian Ellison's
The Fabulous Moolah: First Goddess of the Squared Circle
(with Larry Platt).

Thank you to Hasanthika Sirisena, Julia Kenny, and Lauren Pearson for their help with the early drafts. I am especially grateful to Tony Earley, Joe Regal, and Markus Hoffman for their insights and enthusiasm, and to Emily Graff and everyone at Simon & Schuster. Thanks also to the family, friends, writing communities, and literary journals who helped me become a better writer and gave me reasons to keep trying: my mom, Serena, and my dad, Al; my brother, John, and his limitless wrestling knowledge; the Florida State University Creative Writing Program (2000â2003), the 2007 Sewanee Writers' Conference,
The Mid-American Review
,
The Southern Review
, and
The Greensboro Review
. And I am forever in the debt of my husband, who risked sleeping on the couch to tell me the truth, and who sacrificed his own precious little time so I could have a few more minutes to write. This book was written for my babies, but it would not exist without their father. I love you, Jack.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Angelina Mirabella received her master of arts in English (creative writing) from Florida State University in 2003. Her work has appeared in
The Southern Review, The Mid-American Review,
and
The Greensboro Review
. In 2007, she attended the Sewanee Writers' Conference as a Tennessee Williams scholar. She lives in Ithaca, New York, with her husband and two daughters.
The Sweetheart
is her first novel.

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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition January 2015

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Interior design by Aline Pace

Jacket design by Evan Gaffney

Jacket photograph: Model sitting on convertible
Â© CondÃ© Nast Archive/Corbis

Author photograph Â© Amy O'Brian

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Mirabella, Angelina.

The sweetheart : a novel / Angelina Mirabella.â First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition.

pages cm

1. Women wrestlersâFiction. 2. United StatesâHistoryâ1953â1961âFiction. I. Title.

PS3613.I745S94 2014

813'.6âdc23

2014001457