Goodreads asked Merryl Hammond:

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

Merryl Hammond My mother left our family when I was very young, so my older sister and I were raised by my single father for several years before he remarried. This was back in the early 1960s, when divorce was very rare, and single fatherhood much more so. I never learned my mom's real reason for "abandoning" the nest. She did remarry soon after, so I assume there was a wild love affair of some sort? I've often dreamed of teasing out various possible scenarios, and also of tracing possible outcomes for me as a child and teen: what if she'd stayed in a miserable—possibly abusive—marriage? What if my father had run off, instead of my mother? What if she'd taken me with her when she left? And so on, endlessly. Both my parents are long dead now, so I'm left with my ruminations and imaginations... Great fodder for a novel, perhaps!

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