Goodreads asked Judith Erwin:

What mystery in your own life could be a plot for a book?

Judith Erwin In my novel, Shadows from the Past, I used a mystery from my life. In the 1920s, my paternal grandmother's brother was admitted to the Milledgeville State Hospital in Milledgeville, Georgia, a mental health facility, which many referred to as insane asylum. To my knowledge, he was never released and died there in the 1960s.

As a child, traveling from Atlanta to my grandfather's home in South Georgia, my father would point to the buildings as we passed through Milledgeville and remark how Uncle Jim was there. We never visited. When I asked why he was there, Daddy always said, "Because he threatened to kill his boss."

In 2014, as I drove though wooded areas of North Carolina on the way to my granddaughter's wedding, for some reason, Uncle Jim and Milledgeville came to mind. As a family law attorney, I had my share of clients who made such threats but not really intending to commit murder. None were institutionalized. I began to wonder whether Uncle Jim's threat was serious? Did he make any move to act on it? My research began.

I wanted to read Uncle Jim's admission records. Although I applied several times, my requests were ignored. But I did find that many atrocities took place with commitment of healthy individuals on flimsy grounds to what became one of the largest institutions of it's kind. With the small scrap of information, I built the fictional story of Fury O'Quinn and her quest to uncover the truth of why her grandmother's brother spent his life in the state hospital and what caused her young grandmother to return to the family's homeland (Ireland) at the time of his commitment.

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