Goodreads asked C.F. Joyce:

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

C.F. Joyce I thought about my book for many, many years before I finally sat down to write it. I wanted to write about a girl in her teenage years. Not the events around her or some idealized version of teenagers, but what it is actually like for a girl to grow up. I chose the era of the 1960s because that's when I grew up. Like I mentioned in an answer to another question, I wanted to write what I know, or what I think I remember. Of course, "Persephone in Hell" is a work of fiction, not my memoir.

I read "Little Women" by Louisa May Alcott dozens of times when I was a young girl. It was my favorite book and my true inspiration. I believed I was the character 'Jo' in the book, that's how much I identified with it. So when I wrote my book, without knowing it was happening, I crafted it like "Little Women." I wanted to tell the story of a teenage girl, but I also wanted to place her in the context of her family and the era she grew up in. It's not exactly an historical novel; I don't make any claim to accuracy about the era. But like 'Jo', Glory grows up in a particular time and in a particular family. I hope I've expressed that well.

flag