They had surrendered their share in Confederacy prior to publication, but it seemed unlikely that they would do the same for another potential best seller. Her letters of protest to the governor, the state supreme court, and Louisiana congressmen were ignored, and finally, unable to circumvent the antiquated and illogical inheritance law, her strength depleted by fatal illness, she made the painfully paradoxical decision to prevent publication of what she considered another masterpiece created by her darling. When she pleaded with me to see that her wishes were not violated after her death, her intense emotional commitment so moved me that I agreed to be the novel's "guardian," to use her term. Shortly before she died in August 1984, she altered her will to that effect.

When her lawyer called to inform me that Thelma had died, he also notified me that she had bequeathed The Neon Bible to me "in trust." Having promised to abide by her wishes, however imperious and uncompromising they might appear to others, I was for the next three years involved in various lawsuits brought against her estate. The final outcome, of course, was the defeat of Thelma Toole's attempt to control the fate of her son's first novel from beyond the grave. In 1987 a New Orleans judge ruled for partition of the novel, which in effect would have put it up for public auction if the litigants could not reach some settlement. Rather than allow such a spectacle, I conceded the defeat of Thelma's wishes and my desire to respect them, and The Neon Bible was freed for publication.

The novel you are about to read is the extraordinary creation of a teenage author whose life, which should have been full and rich, ended by his own choice, for reasons none of us perhaps will ever know, fifteen years after The Neon Bible was written.