Goodreads asked Samantha Bruce-Benjamin:

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

Samantha Bruce-Benjamin The character of Serena Lyons, the fabled society hostess and central character of The Westhampton Leisure Hour and Supper Club, was inspired by my love of a house in Remsenburg, NY, on South Country Road, known as the Capt. Rogers House—which has always struck me, to quote Edith Wharton, as the “prettiest house in America.”

While researching some of the history of the hamlet—the “first Hampton” as it is perceived on the East End of Long Island —I came across a snippet of information about a real-life resident of Remsenburg, one Mrs. Edward Lyon, who in the 1930s used the house—an exquisite 18th century Greek Revival structure—to host a supper club every Friday evening known as The Leisure Hour Supper Club.

From there, I began to think of hostesses and parties and last parties and why someone would wish to entertain people. The Serena Lyons of the novel lives a rather more exalted existence in a fictitious Georgian mansion called La Doucette, inspired by some of the fabled mansions of The Hamptons, which I have imposed where the house in question sits, at the top of Shore Road overlooking the Moriches Bay.

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