Goodreads asked Tracy Buchanan:

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

Tracy Buchanan During a holiday to the Exmoor National Park, UK. One day, during a visit to that local pub, I saw three farmers standing around a table. One turned towards us, his dark hair lifting in the breeze, and that was it: the character of Milo burst to life inside my head. As soon as we got back to the cottage we were staying in, I grabbed my notepad and started sketching out Milo’s character. While doing that, I noticed a battered old atlas on the cabin’s shelves among the books left behind by previous occupants and the idea of a story told via an atlas came to me. The rest then poured out as I used my own experiences with infertility to map out Claire’s character and the travels I enjoyed as a magazine editor to dream up settings, including the scars still left behind by the 2004 tsunami that I’d witnessed in places like Thailand and the Maldives.

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