Goodreads asked Debby Detering:

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

Debby Detering Several decades ago, my spouse and I went through the worst time of our half-century marriage with unemployment, housing, and health problems. I suspect those troubles usually come in not pairs, but groups. We needed an escape. We found it together when we walked in the country--running our dog or holding hands together on country roads or hillsides, but a secondary escape was our dream of world travel. I discovered "Aunt Tabby," a world traveler and successful travel writer, at that time. I know she looked like my father's cousin, was a pacifist similar in personality to elderly Cousin Mabel who campaigned for women's suffrage a quarter century before she was allowed to vote, and had an imagination like my Aunt Elizabeth who wrote me notes about birds with messages for me. Aunt Tabby is a traditional storyteller--and a step beyond. Her nephew says, "Be careful what stories you tell," but it's a story about Dad's childhood that arouses the children's curiosity.

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