Goodreads asked S.D. Mayes:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

S.D. Mayes For many years I knew nothing about my grandparents. My mother, Ruth, never spoke of her history. Only in her memoirs after she died, did I learn the real truth of our past; that her family home was bombed in the London blitz and her and her two siblings left orphaned after her parents were killed instantly. She was only fourteen. Looking through the pages of her diary, I got an incredible snapshot of life at that time - about her relationship with her mother, her first job as a telephonist, the food they ate, the cost of living, and of course the dirt, the smoke, and the struggle that they lived with every day. I wanted to shine a light on the childhood she never talked about, and weave that into a novel. It is important to remember the lessons of the past, and it's important that she is the heroine in my book - something she never felt she was in life.

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