What inspired you to write the Girl, Stolen books?

April Henry My fiction always has a healthy percentage of facts. Girl, Stolen began with a story I saw in the local news. A blind girl went out to dinner with her mom and stepdad. Afterward, her folks wanted to go Christmas shopping, but she decided to wait in the car and listen to her music. Her mom left the keys in the ignition in case she got cold. A man came along, saw the keys, jumped into the car, drove off - and didn't realize there was a girl in the back seat. After he figured out she was there, he forced her out of the car. She was unharmed.

But I thought, "What if he had kept her? And what if the thief was a teenager too? And what if his dad was running a chop shop for stolen cars? And what if they thought about letting her go - until they learned she was the daughter of Nike's president?"

To research the book, I bought a blind cane and learned how to use it. I read a lot of autobiographies written by people who had gone blind. Through them, I learned how important guide dogs are to many blind people, so I spent a day at Guide Dogs for the Blind in Boring, Oregon. They even put a blindfold on me and brought out a dog for me to harness and walk. It's very hard to do that if you have never seen the dog or the harness, but I finally managed. Then I tried to pat the dog on the head - and realized I had harnessed the tail end.

I also corresponded with a high school girl who was blind and going to a regular school. And I sent the whole book to a blind woman who has a radio program about books and who has strong feelings about how blind people are portrayed in the media. She had her computer read it to her and caught some typos. So Girl, Stolen was actually proofread by a blind person!

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